


Do You Ever Get Weary?

by greymcdreamysgh



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 205,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28641066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greymcdreamysgh/pseuds/greymcdreamysgh
Summary: MERDER. Meredith and Derek have been married for a few years, but lately the wedded bliss is nowhere to be found. They rent a beach house for the summer, away from the hospital and work and surgery, in an attempt to repair what was broken. Imagining what would have happened if Meredith and Derek got married and had a baby before they worked out their issues. Written from 2007 to 2010 and crossposted from ff.net
Relationships: Meredith Grey & Derek Shepherd, Meredith Grey/Derek Shepherd
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	1. Love never dies a natural death

" _Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source._ _It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds;_ _it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." - Anais Nin_

* * *

They were paying their hard-earned money to stay here.

That's all Meredith could think about as she inspected the filthy kitchen appliances. The people who were here before them could have at least left the house in presentable condition. She should have never let Derek pick this place without talking to her about it first.

As she eyed the dirt on the kitchen linoleum and the unvacuumed carpets, Meredith wondered what Derek was thinking when he chose this as the place where they were going to spend the next three months. The house was the quintessential beach cottage, but the upkeep indicated a complete lack of attention to detail, which seemed fitting for him these days, she thought as she rolled her eyes. In fairness, it wasn't all Derek's fault. What was she was thinking when Derek had suggested this to her? Initially, she thought about how they were both going to take three months off from work and why he even wanted to go in the first place, and she had written the entire ordeal off as completely ridiculous and impractical. But when he cornered her in their room one night after work, and explained to her why they had to go with more desperation in his voice than she had heard in years, she agreed to it.

Soon after they decided to go, however, she relegated this trip to the back of her mind and left the details to Derek. It was an admitted oversight that she was currently regretting as she looked around and saw that the house was nowhere near in order. Tucked away in a remote section of coastal Washington hours away from Seattle Grace and their regular lives, this house had the potential to be quaint. It was oceanfront, painted with a coastal color scheme, and had a balcony overlooking the water. There were several steps leading up to the front door, and they had private beach access through another door in their kitchen. Upstairs were two small bedrooms, painted in soft pinks, yellows, and greens. It would have been wonderful if the owners had only thought to clean it after their previous renters, a group of over-privileged kids celebrating their high school graduation, had left.

Though the house was cute, it was quite small, Meredith noticed as she walked around to get acquainted with her new surroundings. After years of grunt work, she was finally starting to make really good money, and of course he hauled in millions. They could have rented a mansion for the summer if they wanted to, but Derek, who hadn't minded living in a trailer for months years ago, undoubtedly chose this place for its charm.

Eyeing the luggage that was quickly piling up at the front door, she sighed and realized that unpacking would take at least the rest of the day. She carried a portable bedrail upstairs along with a set of sheets and busied herself making up the twin bed in one of the two bedrooms. She smoothed the pink sheets over the mattress and slid the bedrail in place, leaving the favorite mangy teddy bear by the pillow. She still had the other bed to make, bathrooms to sterilize, and groceries to buy but she took a break, perching on the end of the bed. With her elbows on her knees, she let her head slump forward to rest in her hands. She pushed her hair back and sighed, glancing at the teddy bear wistfully.

"Meredith," Derek called as she heard the screen door slam shut.

"Up here," she replied.

Heavy footsteps trudged up the stairs, followed closely by a set of lighter ones. He peeked into the bedroom and dropped an overstuffed bag on the floor with a loud bang. Meredith quickly straightened up, the hint of annoyance crossing her features but saying nothing. "This is the last of the bags," he said. "Emily's stuff. Everything else is downstairs."

"That's fine," Meredith said. "Where is she?"

"I had her right behind me. Bean?" Derek called.

A little girl, hopped up on the adrenaline rush that came with new surroundings, flew into the room as fast as her feet would carry her. She had kicked off her shoes about halfway through the car ride, so she padded barefoot across the hardwood. Her tea-colored curls were pulled back into loose pigtails and her dress already had spilled juice down the front. Her deep blue eyes, the ones that gave her away as Derek's, lit up with excitement.

"Em, you want to test out your new bed?" Meredith asked, patting the mattress. She swung her daughter up onto the mattress and let her lie down in it. Emily immediately reached for her bear, a ratty old brown thing with the fur around the ears loved off. Emily had had this toy, which everyone simply called Bear, in her possession since she was two days old and it had never left her in the almost three years that had passed since.

With Emily in her sight, Meredith turned to Derek. "This house has to be cleaned, and I'm going out for groceries."

"Ok," Derek replied.

"I mean, really, Derek. You could have picked a place that didn't look like a cyclone had come through," she said. Emily got up and, holding Bear by the ear, started to jump on the bed. Meredith reached out absently to steady her, as her gaze remained fixed on Derek. "This was supposed to be relaxing."

Derek simply looked at her for a moment. His eyes didn't betray any feelings of hurt, but they didn't speak of love either. He seemed more confused than anything else, maybe a little lost too, or like he was looking for something. He cleared his throat, "I'm going to take her to the beach, maybe burn off some of that energy."

"Em, Daddy wants to take you to the beach. How does that sound?" Meredith asked.

"Mommy, you come too?" Emily asked.

"No, Mommy has to go buy some food for us to eat for dinner," Meredith replied. "Daddy's going to take you and then I'll see you when I get back. Is there anything special you want to eat?"

"Berries!" Emily squealed.

"Ok, berries it is. Come on, crazy girl," Meredith said, taking Emily's hand and helping her jump down from the bed.

"Bean, should we go down to the water?" Derek asked, taking her up into his arms. She nodded excitedly and he smiled, touching his nose to hers briefly. "Meredith, you'll get everything?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I'll be back in an hour or so. Can you have the fridge clean for when I get back?"

"Sure," he said, as he disappeared down the steps with Emily.

For a few moments after Derek left with Emily, Meredith remained seated on her bed. She tucked Bear close to Emily's pillow, smiling wistfully as she remembered. At first the toy had dwarfed the five-pound, three-ounce Emily. Too quickly for Meredith, though, Bear had become easily portable for her, something that she held by the ear while Derek rocked her to sleep. She sighed and smoothed the sheets down once more before leaving the room.

Retracing the route they took to the house, Meredith easily found the local grocery store. The summer had barely started and since it was the middle of the week, the traffic was light. Meredith could only assume that weekenders would start filling the town as soon as tomorrow, but for now, she relished being by herself and taking her time.

She was used to doing all the shopping in the hour she could squeeze out of her schedule. She was used to rushing. Now that she had no place else to go, she wasn't quite sure how to slow down. When she and Derek first started living together, Meredith wrote out a list of what to buy every week in an effort to get the domestic thing exactly right. Going through the aisles and putting the weekly staples in her cart had become routine long ago. The list had become more of a mental reminder, something she could scroll through in her head to remind herself that Derek always wanted muesli and Emily liked strawberries but not raspberries.

She thought Derek had said something about barbequing, either that he wanted to try it or he wanted to order take-out. It was one of the two and Meredith had no idea if the house even had a grill, but she picked up chicken breasts and hamburger meat anyway. Derek had a one-track mind once he got something in his head.

Eggs, bread, milk, and the only juice Emily would drink all piled into the cart as Meredith forced herself to take her time going through the store. She looked around at the few other customers, and couldn't help but notice that she was the only young person there. It seemed like most everyone who stayed here in the off-season was retired, old ladies shuffling along in orthopedic shoes and pastel sweaters. These people could stay here and do whatever they wanted for as long as they wanted. They had no jobs, no obligations, and here she was, tied down to Seattle in every way imaginable with the long hours, the husband, and the baby. Somehow, she had agreed to give it up for three months.

That's why she initially thought Derek had lost his mind when he suggested this, begged her for this. She remembered asking him how he expected her to leave work for months, and better than that, how did he plan on handling leaving the OR for that long? She had to admit she was a little surprised when Derek had looked her in the eye, as serious as she'd ever seen him, and told her that the OR was always going to be there.

It was easy for him to say that, she thought, since he had already had so much more time than she had. After the roughest intern year Seattle Grace had seen before or since, Meredith had tried to put all of that behind her and continue on with what would hopefully be a much less dramatic residency. When she started her second year, she felt more like herself than she had in months and it showed; she outshined nearly everyone in her program, except for the friendly competition from Cristina. She was insightful, diagnosed quickly and correctly, and remained sharp under pressure. Her cuts were clean, her sutures neat, her hands deft. She flew solo for the first time in her second year, only on an appendectomy, but still. Over the years, she had pulled ahead of the pack, drawing so many comparisons to her mother, something that she didn't mind so much anymore.

She could still remember in as much detail as if it had happened yesterday the night that multiple traumas came in from a car accident. She had assisted Derek on a complex procedure for a man whose head went through his windshield. Hours later, they had collapsed into the on-call room, high on the thought that they had saved his life, and fallen asleep wrapped around each other. In the morning, he whispered "Marry me" in her ear.

The wedding had been a simple affair, but then again, Meredith had never been the kind for a big to-do. She wore the white dress and picked out the colors for the bridesmaids' dresses, the flowers, the tablecloths, and the cake frosting anyway, even though quite frankly, she thought the amount of prep work going into this wedding was a little ridiculous. Six months later though, Meredith couldn't make it through the vows without crying, when Derek promised in front of everyone she knew that he would never leave her.

Emily hadn't been part of her plan, at least not for quite some time, but when the stick turned blue she had felt at the same time giddier and sicker than she did after five tequila shots. She had everything from the debilitating morning sickness, fatigue that trumped anything she felt while she was an intern, and enough strange cravings to make Derek almost as nauseous and tired as she was. Despite a toned down schedule and the best medical advice on record, Emily arrived a month early - tiny, wrinkled, and red, but healthy. Though she had the swollen ankles and the stretch marks to prove it, the pregnancy hadn't seemed altogether real to Meredith until the nurse placed her daughter in her arms. Derek brushed a few sweaty strands of hair off her forehead and kissed her, teary-eyed. Then it became real, so real in fact that it was terrifying. Between the crying and the wobbly head with the vulnerable soft spot and the gangly limbs that she could circle entirely with two fingers, this perfect child should have never been entrusted to her care. On that first night, when her friends had left and Derek had fallen asleep in the chair next to her, Meredith nuzzled Emily close and promised her that she might not be perfect, but she would always try.

It got a little less scary after that, and Meredith and Derek both tried to learn as they went along. Even as a baby, Emily seemed patient with the long hours Meredith worked and her inexperience with kids. She rarely cried, except for the month or two when she was teething and screamed almost nonstop, and the gummy, drooling smiles were the best welcome home Meredith had ever received. Though she had no one to go to for advice, Meredith loved Emily more than she thought she could love anyone and that was enough to get her through everything she didn't know. The soft weight of her daughter against her chest at the end of the day and Emily's fingers clutching her hair as she slept was so blissfully comforting.

As soon as Meredith had told Derek she was pregnant, he had immediately swooped in as the kind of superman he liked to be. He massaged every ache and fed every craving, and coached her through a difficult labor like a champ. He could often be found sitting up nights with Emily reading books and talking to her. When she was ten months old, he dressed her in full Yankees gear and took her to her first baseball game. He savored being her father, and wondered what he'd done to deserve such a remarkable daughter.

At first, he'd been the one to cut down on his hours. While Meredith adored Emily, it had always been her intention to work and after eight weeks of maternity leave, she was anxious to get back to the OR. Derek, who had waited fifteen years to be a father, didn't mind slowing down and working half days for awhile.

Meredith wasn't sure when it happened exactly, when their lives had become predictable and monotonous. If someone had told her during that first year with Derek that they'd ever become predictable, she would have laughed, but secretly longed for a little stability. Somehow, after they had both gone back to work, after Emily's first birthday, her life with Derek had become routine. She did what she always intended to do and focused with newfound dedication on her career, finally choosing neurosurgery as her specialty. Even as a resident, she gave him a run for his money, but rarely scrubbed in beside him. Not many cases required two neurosurgeons at once. Logging long hours in the OR was exhilarating for her, but she managed to make it home in time to snuggle with Emily before bed…most nights, she admitted to herself reluctantly. Some nights, however, she'd push it a little in the OR, and rush to make it home, but Emily would already be asleep in Derek's arms. The looks he gave her on those nights curled around her insides and squeezed hard enough to make her nauseous.

There were plenty of nights though that Derek stayed on-call at the hospital, plenty of times when he'd forgotten something important. One night, when she was sick with a bad head cold, Derek scrubbed in on two craniotomies that could have waited until the next morning. When he saw her the next day, the image of her stuffy nose and sound of her congested breathing the morning before came rushing back to him, and he kicked himself for leaving her alone with Emily overnight. He'd never forgotten her birthday, but for their third wedding anniversary, Meredith reminded him that morning that she had something special planned for him. After work, Meredith dropped the baby off at Izzie's house, and cooked dinner for two (ok, Izzie helped with that too). She finally got a frantic phone call from him when eleven o'clock rolled around to let her know that multiple traumas were coming in and he'd see her in the morning. He made no mention of happy anniversary or sorry I won't be there, and the food got cold and the lingerie went unworn.

Meredith remembered everything, but had problems following through. Derek, on the other hand, just never seemed to remember anymore. Communication had always been an issue, and it was always on Meredith's list of things to work on. Somehow, just when she finally felt she had that part of it down, the other end of the communication line broke down. They forgot to talk and forgot to play. Somewhere along the way, Derek forgot to hold her at night while they slept.

Meredith sighed as she pushed her cart into one of the check-out lines and began piling her groceries up onto the conveyor belt. That was another thing – at some point, a long time ago, this vacation would have seemed exciting. Three months alone with Derek in a beachfront cottage would have seemed unabashedly romantic. They'd play with Emily on the beach and help her collect seashells, and once they fed her and got her to bed, there'd be candlelit dinners and cuddling on the porch while they looked at the ocean. There'd be sex every night and bubble baths and red wine.

Before, it wouldn't have seemed completely daunting to spend three months alone with her husband and child in a beach house, away from their friends and the hospital and surgery. Meredith wouldn't have worried about how they would possibly fill the empty space and the lulls in conversation. She wouldn't have had to worry because the distance that existed between them now had never existed before.

Admittedly, they rarely fought, and Meredith had always thought of that as a good thing, but now, as she stood in this strange grocery store, she realized it was because they rarely talked. He'd tried to tell her that in April when he suggested this trip, and she hadn't really listened. She laughed to herself now at the irony of it all.

"Are you here for the weekend, dear?" the elderly woman ringing up her purchases asked Meredith.

"For the summer, actually," Meredith supplied.

"Oh, how nice!" the cashier said appreciatively. "Where are you from?"

"Seattle," Meredith quickly replied. "My husband and daughter…we're renting a place for the summer. Taking off work, you know. Family time."

"Oh yes, we get a lot of families here on vacation. You'll have a wonderful time. You young people are so busy these days. I'm sure you're looking forward to slowing down a bit. This is just the place. Family is so important. Sometimes people forget that, you know."

"Yeah," Meredith murmured. "Well," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "That's why we're here."

While the cashier scanned her dozens of items at the register, Meredith thought back to that night and what Derek had said. She had come in after a brutal thirty-six hour shift at the hospital and Derek had already tucked Emily in for the night. They went into the bedroom and Meredith started to peel off her clothes, sticky and wet from the rain she had to walk through to get to her car. She sat on the bed and shucked off a pair of jeans and a sweater and he just stood in front of her watching her undress. Don't even think about it, she had told him. She had just worked for a day and a half straight and was exhausted and in no mood. She expected some sort of cocky response about how good he was and how the Meredith he knew was never too tired for that, but what she got instead was something entirely different. Meredith, he had said, I think we should go away this summer.

She laughed and told him fine, to pick the place and she'd take off work for a week. It sounded like a good idea; they could take Emily on her first vacation. No, he'd said. He wanted to get away from Seattle, with her and Emily, for the whole summer. He wanted to go somewhere far away where there would be no work, no distractions, nothing but the three of them for three whole months. Meredith simply looked at him and gave him a short little trill of a laugh. She didn't gratify his suggestion with a legitimate response. She got up to get pajamas out of her dresser, and he'd stopped her, made her look him in the eye, and repeated himself. He added please to the end of it this time. Meredith had spouted off every single reason she could think of about why they couldn't go, the chief resident race being one of them, but after a moment or two, he cut her off.

She didn't realize until he kissed her that she couldn't remember the last time he had done that. Not like _that_ at least. The thought of that startled her into listening, and she stopped fighting the idea and let him explain himself. He could feel them drifting apart, he told her, and he didn't want to throw Addison in her face, but the same thing happened in that relationship and he'd be damned if he was going to make that mistake again. He told her that he refused to let it get that bad, but he could see it coming if they didn't do something. He told her he missed talking to her, really talking to her about things other than daycare schedules and electric bills and even surgery. He missed making love to her, and feeling like he wanted her more than anything else in the world. He told her he resented the way things had become, and that he wanted to try to fix this before it got to the point where they couldn't anymore. Please, Meredith, he'd finished. And she agreed.

When Meredith arrived back at the beach house, the speech he gave her on that rainy April night faded to the back of her mind. Instead, she thought about the next three days, which would undoubtedly be filled with tedious cleaning and unpacking, trying to get this house in a livable state. More than that, she thought about the upcoming three months, during which she had voluntarily taken herself away from everything. She stared at the front door of the house, grocery bags in hand, and thought about why she willingly took herself away from the hospital for weeks. Chief resident would be decided in a few weeks, and by leaving, she essentially took herself out of the running. She cursed Derek for knowing that and still begging her to do this, and she cursed herself for agreeing to something so stupid. It was already done, Meredith mumbled as she let herself in and started angrily slamming the groceries around on the counters. Derek hadn't wiped down the inside of the refrigerator and God only knew what was in there before.

She slid open the back door, the one that faced the ocean, with every intention of bitching at him that she had only asked him to do that one thing. The words stopped short in her throat though when she saw Derek and Emily playing on the beach. He gently tossed a ball to her, but she was still too young to coordinate herself to catch it and throw it back to him. Instead, the ball landed a few inches in front of her feet and she picked it up, throwing it as well as she could in Derek's direction. It didn't make it even halfway back to him, but she tried. Emily ran towards him as fast as she could, her ponytails slipping loose and her arms outstretched, shrieking with delighted laughter. Smiling, he let her catch him and tackle him. His shorts and polo shirt were covered in sand as he fell to the ground and she jumped on top of him. She splayed her hands across his chest and screamed when he gripped her under the armpits and tossed her playfully into the air. He set her back on the ground and got up, letting her begin the chase all over again. He let her run around for a minute, and when she ran into his arms, he gathered her up and swung her around. He held her with both hands and blew a raspberry on the back of her neck, tickling her while careful to step around the sandcastle that they had built while Meredith was gone.

That was why, Meredith realized, as she watched the two of them play. Yes, she had thought about the surgeries she'd miss and the opportunity to be chief resident that she would effectively give up if she left. All of that had definitely crossed her mind in April, and all of those reasons were the ones that constantly made her feel like an idiot for being here. But her rationale suddenly became clearer as she observed carefree, innocent Emily playing in the sand with her father. When Derek had hinted at distance, perhaps even divorce, her mind had gone to Emily, and she knew the reason she'd told Derek to go ahead with this lay with her. As soon as Emily wrapped her hand around Meredith's fingers, and her heart, as an infant, Meredith promised herself that this beautiful child would never experience what she did. She had agreed to this much more for Emily's sake than for her own.

She let the two of them continue to play, uninterrupted, and she turned around and walked back into the kitchen to start cleaning and stocking the refrigerator. She couldn't be everything the way she had always hoped she'd be able to be, the way she knew Derek and Emily needed her to be, but she did promise Emily that she'd try.


	2. I bruise you, you bruise me

_I bruise you  
_ _You bruise me  
_ _We both bruise so easily_

* * *

When Meredith awoke on the morning of the first full day at the house, she took one look out the window and wanted to curl around her pillow and go back to sleep. Between the rain and the daunting thought of an entire day with her family without work to break it up, she figured she deserved at least another hour. It was mostly the rain though. Definitely the rain. Living in Seattle for years made her used to this kind of dismal weather, but when you were on vacation at the beach, wasn't it supposed to be somewhat warm and semi-tropical? Shouldn't she at least have been awakened with dazzling sunlight?

She lazily opened one eye and saw that even at this hour, the other side of the bed was already empty. Derek _would_ get up at sunrise on vacation. Though she tried, Meredith's internal doctor clock wouldn't allow her to sink back into sleep. Her body was telling her that, at 7 a.m., she was supposed to be up and getting ready to go to the hospital. She was supposed to already be _at_ the hospital. Rolling out of bed, she shivered a little and pulled her long sleeves down over her knuckles, crossing her arms protectively over her body. She treaded as quietly as she could down the hallway, hoping that she wouldn't wake Emily just because she couldn't sleep anymore. She curled her fingers around Emily's door and peeked inside as quietly as she could, but Emily must have already woken up too because her bed was an empty mess of sheets.

Downstairs, Meredith found Emily sitting on the kitchen countertop, stirring a large bowl of pancake batter. Derek stood with his back to her, facing the stove as he readied the griddle to start making breakfast.

"Bean, how's that batter coming?" Derek asked.

"Good. Daddy, I stir it up," she replied, laboriously pushing the wooden spoon back and forth across the bowl.

"That's good, get it ready for me, ok?" he said, taking no notice of Meredith.

"Hi, Mommy," Emily exclaimed, as she held out the bowl to her. "We're making pantakes."

"Hi, Em," Meredith said, her face breaking into a smile. "I see that. Is Daddy helping you?"

"Daddy is actually ready for the batter," Derek interrupted, taking the bowl from Emily's outstretched hands. "Thank you for helping me, Bean." He curled one arm around Meredith's waist and drew her in, pressing his lips to her temple. "Morning," he said softly.

"Morning," she said with genuine surprise, her arms resting awkwardly at her side.

Meredith pulled Emily into her arms, snuggling her close as Emily wrapped her legs around Meredith's torso. Emily pressed both of her hands against Meredith's cheeks, cupping her face in her tiny palms, and kissed her smack on the mouth. Meredith squeezed Emily a little for a second and sat down with her at the kitchen counter, watching as Derek began spooning batter onto the griddle.

"How'd you sleep?" Derek asked.

"Um…good," Meredith replied. "Yeah, pretty good," she mumbled. "Em, are you warm enough?" she asked, rubbing her palms up and down Emily's bare arms.

"Yeah. Daddy said we play on the beach today."

"I don't know, Em. It's raining outside, so we might have to wait until tomorrow to do that."

"It's supposed to stop in a little bit," Derek interjected, flipping the pancakes one by one. "We can probably play outside today, Em,"

Meredith shot him a look of angry frustration, but she let it go and turned her attention back to Emily. "Emily, what would you like to do today if it doesn't stop raining?"

"Play outside."

"If it's still raining later, we might not get to do that, so what would you like to do instead? We could color some pictures, or watch a movie. We could have a tea party if you want, Em."

"No, we go to the beach," Emily said stubbornly.

"Ok, we'll see," Meredith finally conceded, kissing the top of Emily's head.

By the time they finished breakfast, it had stopped drizzling outside, though it looked like it could start raining again at any minute. Relentlessly, Emily kept insisting on going outside, so they decided to take a walk now while they still could. While Derek cleaned up the kitchen, Meredith took Emily upstairs to get her dressed. She led her by the hand into her bedroom and sat her down on the floor while she picked out something warmer than just a short-sleeved shirt for her to wear outside.

Meredith plopped down on the floor, holding a pair of tiny sweatpants and a zip-up hoodie in her hands. While she was waiting, Emily had taken to twirling around the room, but came willfully to her mother when she called her.

"What are you doing, Em?" Meredith asked, holding Emily's hand and helping her step into the sweatpants.

Emily looked at her with a wry, mischievous smile. Derek's. "Bein' a pwincess."

"Oh really? Ok, princess, you're ready to go explore," she said with a slight laugh, zipping up Emily's sweatshirt and putting a pair of flip flops on her feet.

The gloomy, overcast skies and the soggy sand, a combination of high tide and the drenching rainfall, didn't exactly make Meredith want to put out effort, or even leave the warmth of the house. Emily's excitement about the entire idea got to her though. She slipped on a pair of shoes and one of Derek's sweatshirts that she had long ago repossessed and followed Derek and Emily onto the back porch and into the wet sand.

They let Emily run a bit ahead and the two of them fell instantly in step with each other. As they walked along the water, Meredith looked up at Derek. She would know his face anywhere, would be able to pick out those eyes and that hair (of course the hair) even if all her memories had suddenly been sucked away. Something about him now struck her though, and she ran the risk of being caught staring as she tried to figure out what it was. The strong jaw and the hint of stubble, like he always had some five o'clock shadow to take care of, was exactly the same. He was even wearing his favorite flannel pajama pants. After a moment or two, she realized that it wasn't that anything had changed, just that it had been awhile since she had really looked to make sure.

Their strides were relatively equal, plodding along the moist sand as Emily walked, occasionally spinning around or stopping to inspect an interesting seashell, in front of them. Meredith held her arms across her chest; Derek's rested awkwardly at his sides. The two of them, who had once been inextricably intertwined in a pile of limbs when they were together, now maintained a platonic foot and a half of distance between. They hadn't walked on a beach together since their honeymoon in Tahiti, a trip Meredith insisted wasn't necessary but Derek had been adamant about. She bit her lip and looked down, smiling a bit at the memory. He had definitely made it worth her while.

"What?" Derek asked suddenly, and Meredith realized he was looking at her too.

"Oh, um…Tahiti," she supplied, a flush coloring her cheeks, as she responded in an embarrassed fluster.

"Oh," Derek replied, chuckling a bit. "That was a pretty good trip."

"Yeah, it was."

"When was that, four years ago?" Derek asked. He shook his head as if that was a little too hard to believe.

"Daddy, look what I got!" Emily suddenly shrieked, interrupting them and running back towards them with a distinctive pink-colored seashell in hand.

"Very pretty, Bean!" Derek nodded appreciatively.

"Mommy, look!" Emily hopped in front of Meredith, thrusting the shell up at her.

"It's beautiful, Em," Meredith said. "Are you going to bring it home with you?"

"I bring it in our house?" Emily asked excitedly.

"You can," Derek replied. "We're on vacation. Here, I'll hold it for you," he said, taking the shell from her.

"What's vacation?" Emily asked.

"It means we get to live here for awhile," Meredith explained, grinning a little in spite of herself when she noticed Emily's eyes brighten just slightly.

"And it means that Mommy and Daddy aren't going to work for awhile," Derek added quickly.

"No hosital?" their daughter asked them curiously, her cheeks scrunched up as if she couldn't quite fathom such a thing.

"Nope," Derek agreed. "No hospital."

"Oh," Emily replied softly, seemingly satisfied with Derek's answer, though clearly a little surprised at the change of pace. She spun around and went back to exploring the beach.

Meredith glanced back towards the house, already several hundred feet away, and then again at Derek. For the beginning of June, it was colder than it should have been, even for Washington. She crossed her arms protectively across her front and drew the fleecy fabric of her sweatshirt tighter around her body.

"Maybe this was a bad idea," she sighed.

"It's not raining. What's the problem?" Derek asked accusingly.

"This whole thing," Meredith shot back. "Maybe we shouldn't have come here."

"Why not? She's happy."

"She's confused. She's two years old, Derek. Maybe this was irresponsible, taking her out of the environment that she knows for such a long time." For years, the staff of the hospital had been Meredith's family. In the beginning, they were her only family. They still were, most of the time. Sure, she had the huge, boisterous clan of Irish in-laws, who she saw on holidays, and somewhat more frequently now that they had Emily. But these people, the ones she started with, scrubbed in with, took falls for – they were her real family. They were the family Emily had been born into. She spent sixty hours a week at Seattle Grace in the hospital daycare. It was as much a home to her as it was to her parents.

"Taking her away from our routine to give her our undivided attention? This is not a mistake, Meredith," Derek said defensively, almost angrily.

"They're her family, Derek," Meredith murmured. They're her family. They're _my_ family.

"No, they're not," Derek responded firmly, immediately. "You and I, we are her family. The hospital is not her family. She loves this. Look at her," Derek motioned, directing Meredith's attention to Emily kicking up the frothy surf. "She is not confused. She's happy. Emily?" Derek called ahead to his daughter. He laughed a bit when she looked up. Her hair, which usually framed her face in delicate curls, stuck out wildly at all ends, disheveled from the combination of activity and moisture in the air. "Are you happy?"

"Yeah," Emily giggled, screaming as a wave rolled up and doused her feet in cold water.

"Mature," Meredith muttered. She looked up at the sky, noticing it visibly darken. "It's gonna rain. Em, you ready to go home?" she asked. "Come on," she said, extending her hand. "Come on, let's go home," she mustered, as cheerfully as she could.

"Fine. Let's go home," Derek conceded.

Halfway back to the house, the skies opened up, drenching all three of them in a cold downpour. Meredith initially tried to cover her head with her hands, but realizing it was useless, she broke into a sprint back towards the house. Derek swept Emily up into his arms and ran her the rest of the way back to the house, easily catching up with Meredith. Emily laughed the entire way back, thinking the whole thing some kind of delicious game, and when Meredith stripped her down to her underwear in the hallway, she shivered but jumped up and down excitedly. She left Emily's wet clothes there, and, ignoring Derek, took Emily upstairs to change her clothes again.

"They are not her family, Meredith," Derek called after her. "They're not your family," he muttered under his breath.

The rainy weather continued for the rest of the day, trapping the three of them inside the house, which Meredith was starting to view as a very nice, very expensive sort of prison. The kind of prison with upholstered furniture in floral patterns and a half-bath on the first floor. The kind of prison that she felt a bitter sense of shame creeping up her throat every time she referred to it as a prison.

When Derek went upstairs to change out of his wet clothes, he didn't bother putting normal clothes on; he simply picked out a dry pair of pajamas and wore those instead. He looked in on Emily's room and found the two of them engaged in a very steep game of tea party. Apparently some very important pretend guests had been invited. Emily reached across the tiny table they had brought with them and grabbed the hand Meredith held her teacup with.

"Like this, Mommy," Emily instructed, pulling Meredith's pinky away from the cup.

"Where did you learn that?" Meredith snorted amusedly, sticking her finger out in an attempt to follow Emily's fancy instructions.

"My daddy said that's how a pwincess has tea," Emily explained.

"Daddy has tea parties with you?" Meredith asked in disbelief, smiling apologetically as Emily pulled her finger away from the cup once again.

Emily nodded seriously. "He wear my special hat," she continued, referring to a frilly pink Easter bonnet that Derek's mother sent last year. Meredith remembered opening the package one afternoon and being assaulted with an abundance of ribbon and lace, all adorning one very small hat. The whole ensemble was so over the top that Meredith didn't even want Emily to wear it. She remembered putting it on Emily briefly, just long enough to take a few pictures to email to Derek's mother and sisters. As much as Meredith despised it, wouldn't have chosen it if it was the last hat on earth, Emily didn't seem to mind it in the least. Finally, Meredith resorted to telling her that the hat, while undoubtedly very beautiful, was only meant for special occasions.

"He does?" Meredith questioned Emily in legitimate shock. Derek Shepherd. The flannel-wearing, wood-chopping fisherman. The diehard Yankees fan. The hotshot brain surgeon. Spending his afternoons off drinking air out of tiny plastic cups, with his pinky jutting out like he was the queen of England. Wearing a pink Easter bonnet, no less.

"Daddy looks pwetty in my special hat, Mommy," Emily replied.

Derek blushed a little on the other side of the doorway. His secret was out. Quite frankly, he deserved to have a few good-natured jokes thrown in his direction. He hoped that Meredith would tease him about this later.

He never made his presence known; instead, he returned to his bedroom alone. Rummaging through his suitcase, which sat open and overflowing in the corner of the master bedroom, he pulled out a book he had been meaning to read for months. He got back in bed and opened to page one, quickly turning the pages as relaxation sank in. He relished reading something that wasn't out of a medical journal, but was just a novel with a mediocre plot. He only looked up at the clock when his stomach started to growl, and he noticed that several hours had passed. Holding his place in his book with his thumb, he went downstairs to get some lunch.

Back in the living room, he saw that Meredith and Emily had had the same idea. Meredith curled into the corner of the couch, book in hand with a few more stacked on the coffee table. Emily sat quietly next to her, and Meredith wrapped one arm around her while using the other to turn the pages as she read aloud to her. They were almost halfway in to one of Emily's favorites.

"Down out of the tree he went," Meredith read quietly. "Down, down, down! It was a long way down. The baby bird could not fly. He could not fly, but he could walk. 'Now I will go and find my mother,' he said," she continued, her voice soft and full of expression. Emily sat with rapt attention, peering across Meredith's lap to look at the pictures.

Derek smiled, but said nothing. After quickly fixing a sandwich, he took a seat in the armchair across from them. He started to thumb through his book, but found himself glancing at them every so often, and when he did, he lost his place in his own text.

"'You are not my mother,' Meredith continued a moment later, her fingers absentmindedly in Emily's hair. "'You are a snort," she said, with enough emphasis to make Emily burst into peals of giggles.

"Mommy, that not his mother," Emily explained, shaking her head as she pointed her finger at the crane on the page.

"No, that's a snort," Meredith agreed, laughing a little at Emily's amusement.

"Daddy, that not his mother. It's a snort instead," Emily said, looking up expectantly at Derek.

"You're right," Derek replied, looking up from his book. "Is he going to find his mother?" he asked Emily concernedly.

"I sink so," Emily nodded vigorously, reaching over and turning the page for Meredith. "I sink he will."

As Meredith continued to read, Emily sunk down next to her. She rested her head on Meredith's thigh and her palm on Meredith's ankle, Meredith's body essentially forming a protective cocoon around her. "'Yes, I know who you are,' said the baby bird," she murmured, knowing that this was Emily's favorite part. "'You are not a kitten. You are not a hen. You are not a…what?" Meredith nudged, pointing to the picture.

"Dog," Emily boasted, as Derek looked up from his book again. In the few minutes it had taken Meredith to read this book, he should have at least gotten through a few pages, but he was still on the same passage he was when he came downstairs. He found himself reading it over and over again, getting nowhere.

"Good girl. 'You are not a cow. You are not a boat, or a plane, or a –"

"Snort!" Emily interjected, yawning comfortably.

"'You are a bird, and you are my mother,'" Meredith finished, flipping the book closed. She shushed Emily soothingly, rubbing her back. At first, Meredith had used all the tricks she had learned at work in attempts to comfort Emily. She talked to her like she would a peds patient, softly and slowly in an effort to build trust. I am not going to hurt you. As time passed, Meredith began to talk to her patients the way she talked to Emily. She began to take the time to sit with them when they were scared, and was happy to hold a hand, or explain a procedure again for the seventh or eighth time. She never thought she would be known for her bedside manner. That would have been very Izzie of her. But after awhile, she couldn't help it; she had unknowingly mommy-tracked herself.

"Derek," she mumbled, pointing to Emily, who had fallen asleep against her. "Put her in her bed?"

Derek nodded, leaving his book opened on the coffee table and scooping Emily gently into his arms. He pressed his lips to her cheek and carried her upstairs. Meredith remained on the couch alone for a minute before deciding to go upstairs as well.

All of a sudden, she too felt very tired, like was carrying an extra fifty pounds and all of it was attached to a rope tied around her heart. It pulled down, down, down. It was a long way down. But she was Emily's mother. And she had to try.

Ok, this wasn't so bad so far, she thought as she took the stairs one at a time. She could do this. She _wanted_ to do this. For Emily. She wanted to do this for Emily. Or for herself. Maybe both. The first day was almost over. It was going ok. The beach…well there was room for improvement, but she was in this house, not working, reading books to her daughter. That was a good start. Maybe it made Emily feel lucky. Meredith always wanted to feel like the lucky girl growing up, but she never did. Instead, she was the girl who didn't bring cupcakes for her birthday, who became the freak with the angry pink hair. She would like that for Emily, she thought, to feel like the lucky one.

She tried stepping quietly into Emily's room, just as Derek was opening the door to leave.

"She's napping," Derek said. "It's a little early for her nap, but I guess its ok."

"Brenda said she goes down as early as 12:30 some days; it's ok. She was up early. Plus, it's stressful essentially moving. She's probably tired."

Derek looked at her, a mixture of confusion and disappointment written on his face. He didn't know what he thought would happen when he brought her here, but he didn't expect it to be this uncomfortable. He knew that she had become somewhat distanced. He knew that at some point they had added 'parenting team' to their job descriptions, right after surgeons and coworkers, pushing husband and wife down on the list of hats to wear. But even he didn't realize that it had gotten to the point where, without Emily as a middle man, they didn't have much to say to each other at all.

He would try though, because Derek Shepherd did not fail, especially at things he was supposed to be good at. He did not like to lose when he thought he knew what he was doing. He did not appreciate being blindsided. With medicine, or with love, he was always going to try, even if it got him into trouble, even if it was difficult. He wouldn't be himself if he didn't try.

"She probably is," he agreed, pulling the door closed behind him and stepping out into the hallway. "Maybe we could talk?" he asked. "While she's asleep."

"Oh," Meredith mumbled, all her bravery, all her trying, leaving her in an instant. "I, uh, was actually going to take a nap too. I'm kind of tired. Stressed out," she admitted, shrugging her shoulders. "We don't have to do the thing."

"We _do_ have to do the thing," he replied. "Meredith…."

"No, we don't," she countered stubbornly. "Its fine, Derek. I'm tired, I'm going to sleep," she muttered.

"Fine," he replied, watching her disappear into the bedroom.

When mid-afternoon rolled around, Derek started to prepare dinner. He didn't know what he had expected when he dreamt up this trip. He did know it wasn't going to be easy, but he had to admit that somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped that Meredith would fall easily back into his arms, that their reconnection would be immediate, that they'd realize the error of their ways. But the fact was that his plan was failing already, quite spectacularly actually. Day two and he was already frustrated with the lack of immediate results of his experiment. Meredith had spent most of the day walking – sometimes literally running – away from him. She'd barely said two words to him. They weren't even eating together for god's sake. Well, they had breakfast together, but that didn't count. A couple of pancakes was nothing to brag about. Already they had missed the lunch opportunity, all because he had gotten so involved with his book that he didn't pay attention to anything else. They would eat dinner as a family, he thought, as he marinated a few chicken breasts in something tangy and sweet Meredith had picked up at the grocery store.

By the time Meredith and Emily woke up from their naps, Derek had started the rice, browning it with a little butter in a saucepan first before adding some chicken stock. He poked at the mixture a bit with a wooden spoon, checking the heat on the burners and also the status of the chicken in the oven. Once he determined that everything was cooking right on schedule, he glanced back at Meredith and Emily, who were snuggling on the couch together, attempting to wake up.

"Dinner's in half an hour," he announced, turning his attention back to the kitchen.

Promptly thirty minutes later, Derek set several dishes down on the dining room table. "Emily," he called. "Time to eat. Come in here, please. Mer…."

He passed the food around and cut up Emily's meat for her before focusing on his own meal. Derek stuck precise bites into his mouth, chewing slowly, methodically. Conversation. Say something, say something, say something, he muttered to himself in time with the rhythm of his chewing.

"Emily, what was your favorite thing today?" Meredith asked before he could get anything out.

"I like the beach," she nodded along as she spoke, plucking a piece of chicken off her plate with her forefinger and thumb and putting it in her mouth.

"Bean, we use our forks, remember?" Derek reminded. "What did you like about the beach?"

"I like the water. Daddy, I swim in there?"

"In a couple weeks, it's still a little too cold for that though," he agreed.

"We can put our feet in," Meredith interjected. "We can do that tomorrow, if it doesn't rain again. What else did you like about the beach? What about your seashell?"

"Yeah, I like that," Emily agreed. "I like vacation the best. More than the water."

"You do?" Derek asked, unable to keep a slight look of smugness off his features. "What do you like about vacation? No hospital?" he prodded.

Emily scrunched her face up in confusion, creasing the corners of her eyes and the bridge of her nose as she considered the question. "I don't know," she said finally. "I not go back to the hospital for a long time?" she asked. There was an undeniable sense of disappointment in her question, enough of a sentiment that allowed Meredith her moment to be smug.

"Well, no," Meredith answered. "But not forever. You'll see everyone soon," she assured her. "What do you like the best about vacation?" she asked in an attempt to get her back on track.

"My mommy _and_ my daddy."

After dinner had been cleared off the table and Emily had been given her bath, they sat down together to watch some television before bed. Emily laid between her parents on the couch, her feet sprawled in Derek's lap and her head resting in Meredith's. Derek's hands curled around Emily's feet as Meredith's ruffled lightly through her hair. As it neared Emily's bedtime, they both tried to start lulling her to sleep. Meredith began to rub her back in gentle circles, her hand meeting Derek's as he tried to do the same thing.

"I'll take her upstairs," she whispered, hoisting Emily onto her chest. "Em," she said, the words drifting quietly by the drowsy toddler's ear. "It's bedtime, ok? Mommy's going to take you up to your bed."

Before Meredith could get up fully off the couch, Derek tugged on the back of her t-shirt. "Night, Bean," he murmured, kissing her forehead. "I always kiss her goodnight," Derek said, almost defensively.

Derek turned off the television and followed Meredith upstairs, but instead of going into Emily's room, he brushed his teeth and got into his own bed. It had been a very long, exhausting day, and he was quite ready for it to be over. He pulled the covers up to his neck and turned on his side, waiting for Meredith to finish putting Emily down for the night. He wanted to have this talk. They needed to have this talk. What else were they doing here if they weren't going to have this talk? He tossed and rolled over after a few minutes, looking at the clock. Twenty minutes had passed, and he hadn't heard so much as a footstep coming from the hallway.

A little more time went by, and when Meredith still didn't join him, he got up to check on Emily. A couple of times recently she had put up a fight going to bed. Something about having better, more fun, things to do while she was awake. On nights like those, it took him up to an hour to get her to relax and go to sleep. He padded down the hallway to her room, expecting to find her sitting up in bed, begging Meredith for three more books. Two more. One more.

Instead, he opened the door just a crack to find both of them curled up on Emily's twin bed together. Meredith slept on her side, facing Emily. She snored slightly, with one arm drawn up close to her chest and the other slung gently over Emily's back. Emily lay on her stomach next to her, peacefully asleep with her mouth open, hair falling in front of her face in soft curls. One hand reached out, clutching a lock of Meredith's hair between her fingers for security.

He looked at them, and then back down the darkened hallway at the open bedroom door. At the visible corner of the bed, with the rumpled sheets and the turned down cover. At the bed with no one in it. Empty. Very empty. Devastatingly empty. He turned around and went downstairs, deciding in that moment to sleep on the couch that night. He had no desire to sleep in their bed alone.


	3. You take my words and twist them round

_I own my insecurities; I try to own my destiny  
That I can make or break it if I choose  
But you take my words and twist them 'round  
Til I'm the one who brings you down  
Make me feel like I'm the one to blame for all of this..._

* * *

The second night in the house was more restless than the first, as if the mounting tension had woven its way deeply into the foundation of the house; into Emily's psyche itself, even. Over the course of the night, she had somehow wound up on top of Meredith time after time, breathing the same shared air slowly, over and over, until Emily's warm breath in her face woke Meredith out of a sound sleep. Though Meredith had slid Emily off her stomach, Emily still unconsciously reached for Meredith, one hand curling again around a lock of Meredith's blonde hair while the other occasionally worried the fur around Bear's ears. When Meredith woke the next morning, rustling for a moment and then propping herself up with one arm, she gently loosened Emily's fierce grip and sat up in bed.

The sunlight unrolled itself underneath the curtains and Meredith squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. She knew what Derek would say to her. He would touch her cheek ever so slightly with his fingertips, and wistfully ask her not to run. But she couldn't help it. Not when she saw him starting to run too. If her mother was still there, still had her mind, Meredith could have asked her, even though she didn't like to talk about Thatcher, when exactly her marriage had started to go south. She wanted to know all of a sudden when Ellis had had enough and decided to throw in the towel. She wanted to know what her father had been like at that time, and what had been going through his mind that made him unwilling or unable to fight for his daughter. She wanted to know if they had been fooling themselves from the beginning or if the inherent differences had just become too much towards the end. Or was it just the one devastating event, the affair, which shattered what used to be a loving relationship?

This was one of the only things Meredith could think of that she would have rather asked her mother than one of her friends. She would have told Cristina in a heartbeat, asked her to just tell her straight up what she should do, how to fix this. Cristina would have hid her sarcastic veneer for that moment, and given Meredith the sincerity that she needed, but this was one problem that she didn't offer up to her best friend. Meredith told Cristina the stories from their daily life, the ones that made Cristina thankful that she wasn't married. That was the thing though. Cristina knew that Derek got moody and had a tendency to be a cocky workaholic. She knew (and even kind of respected, although she'd never tell Meredith) that Derek still couldn't resist a daring press-worthy surgery, even if it meant it would take all night. But Cristina also knew that these procedures often left Meredith with a colicky infant, a teething baby, a vomiting toddler, and maybe the surgeries had cons when there was an exhausted wife and a child at home. Cristina heard all about the inconveniences and the fights that allowed her ample opportunities to call Derek a McBastard and cheer Meredith up. She knew about the things that happened that they never expected or wanted, and she understood how Meredith needed to deal with being blindsided. But what Cristina didn't know was that these little hurts, when they built up over time, ran a deep rut into the middle of a marriage. It all came as quite a shock to Cristina when Meredith pulled her aside at work, swallowed back tears, and finally admitted that things had gotten really bad.

Meredith slowly eased herself out of bed, doing her best not to shake the mattress at all and wake Emily. When she went downstairs to start a pot of coffee, she was surprised to find Derek lying asleep on the couch. Sitting down at the kitchen counter, she slumped her head in her hands and waited for the coffee to brew, staring at Derek with the same exhaustion in her eyes that curled around her bones. After a few moments, she poured a cup into a green mug with a chipped handle, and took a cautious sip of black coffee. She resented him then, resented that circumstance made it so easy for her to feel like she was in the wrong here. When Derek started to run, so did she. When he started to push, she pushed back. Actually, now that so much time had passed, it was becoming harder and harder to say with any certainty who started this slow dissolution. Now, just because Derek stopped first, he was supposed to be some kind of hero? Just because he was trying to pull her back, trying to be McDreamy again, she was supposed to let down her guard and follow him in a beach-bound SUV to some bullshit house on the coast? She had to run hard enough so that when he decided that this really wasn't worth the trying after all, she'd be far enough away that it wouldn't hurt very much at all. Since when had protecting herself become a crime? She'd grown up doing it, and maybe the real mistake here was stopping all of that when she married Derek.

Derek started to stir, stretching and extending his arms over his head like a cat sunning himself on a windowsill. His joints cracked a little, and he opened his eyes and turned on his side. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the sunshine, and fixed his gaze on Meredith. She remained at the counter, quietly, cautiously, sipping the hot liquid and reading a magazine. Derek stared at her for a few minutes, watching her alternate between skimming the magazine and stealing needled glances at him. She would sit there until her bladder exploded, he realized, and never say a word. They rarely fought, quite a change from the marathon screaming sessions he used to have with Addison. For once, he wished Meredith would be more like his ex-wife, and dig into him instead of avoiding him altogether. He would have much preferred a hard slap across the face than the cold sideways stares he was receiving now.

He wanted her to fight. So he dug under her skin. He knew her well enough to know that she would have to be backed up into a corner to acknowledge that everything was anything other than fine.

"Why didn't you sleep in bed last night?" he asked, sleep shaking out of his voice as soon as he spoke and a bitter accusation lacing his words.

She looked up from her reading. "I fell asleep with Em," she shrugged.

"You didn't wake up at all, all night?" he pressed. He sat up on the couch, but made no move to come over towards her.

"She's slept through the night since she was seven months old, Derek."

He felt like a little boy again, poking the loveable neighborhood dog with a stick. The mutt served as a loyal playmate to him and his friends, but with the right amount of agitation it became something entirely different. If you hit the right spot, the dog spiraled back into a frenzied animal, one who had been beat up on too much.

"She kicks. She rolls all over the bed. There's a reason why we spent weeks trying to get her to sleep in her own bed."

"She was fine," she insisted. "I slept fine, and she's still asleep."

"Ok," he said carefully, drawn out in an indication that he thought she was full of crap.

"Why do you care where I slept?" she finally snapped. "You didn't sleep in our bed last night either."

"Why can't you just say that you didn't want to come to bed?" he retorted, his tone rising in a sharp trill. "Why am I here, Meredith?" he asked, before he gave her a chance to answer his first question. "I didn't come here to sleep on a couch and talk in circles around Emily to you. I can do that at home."

"So what, you brought us here to have sex? We can do that at home too," she said angrily, tightly.

He pushed her a little more. "Not lately," he answered sarcastically.

"So we have problems because you don't get laid enough?"

He was getting upset now. His plan to get her fired up was quickly spiraling out of control as he began to lose his cool, his emotions getting the best of him. "We have problems because you run away, Meredith. You think everything's fine and it's not! It's not fine, and you won't talk to me about it. I know you're not fine; you're still running. Why did we even come here if you're going to be this way?"

"Because this is me?" she asked tersely. "It's always me running, but what about you? You don't get to put all of this on me. If I run, it's because you make me. What am I supposed to do? Sit at home and rock your baby to sleep while you're trying to be some cowboy in the OR?"

"What the hell do you think I do when you're off doing the same thing?" he shot back.

"So you can work but I can't? You can have the surgeries and the medical journals and everything that you want, but I can't? How very 1950s of you. Thank you," she muttered acerbically.

"That's not what I meant. You're there for Emily, but when it comes to us, you don't give a shit."

"I'm here, aren't I?" she responded immediately, softer just for that moment. "You know what, you don't give a shit either," she continued in a frantic rage. "You swoop in and to be the perfect husband when you want to be, but when you think everything is fine, you do whatever the hell you want, Derek. You're lazy with me. You're lazy with me," she repeated. "I drop the baby off at Izzie's, I try…and then it was…." she trailed off. "You weren't there," she finished decidedly.

"You didn't want me there," he said hysterically. "You wouldn't talk to me. You wouldn't talk to anyone. What did you want me to do? Force my way in?"

"Yes," she breathed emphatically, sure and immediate.

Derek looked at Meredith, but wouldn't go to her. Instead, he got up off the couch, but just walked around the living room, back and forth until he started to get a little dizzy. The anger rushed to his head, along with the grief over what he was losing, or had maybe already entirely lost. She remained at the counter, gripping the handle of her mug so tightly that she was certain she'd shatter it if she held on to it much longer.

Latent fury and raw emotion boiled in her veins, and it took everything she had to keep it in check. "You're still not there," she clenched.

"Neither are you! If I'm so lazy with you, then why is it ok for you to work whenever you want to? Why do you get to be lazy with me? I'm just supposed to take it, no questions asked?"

"I have to work, Derek. I have to."

"What about your family?!" he exploded. "I don't want to be that guy, Meredith. I lost an eleven-year marriage because I became that husband who was just too busy to care. I know you love your friends, and I know you want to work. I get that. I even get that you have to work. But I see you slipping away. You're becoming who I was." He held up a hand in surrender when he saw her start to open her mouth again, continuing on, "I'll admit that I was doing some of the things I used to do too. I was running too, but I want it to stop. I want us to be better. But all you do is keep running, further and further, and I just wish you would stop too. We can't just avoid this forever."

"You have to be the hero, don't you?" she asked.

She knew he was right. Well, at least part of him was right. She cocooned herself in a blanket of I'm-fine's when her life started to spiral out of control. It was her thing, even more so than the tequila and the one night stands with inappropriate men. If this was the beginning of the end, she could really go for a drink right now. It'd be almost poetic, to start with tequila and end with the same.

She regarded him carefully from her seat at the kitchen counter. He gripped the fabric of his pants tightly with both hands, kneading the fabric back and forth across his thighs. Refusing to meet her gaze for a few moments, when he finally did look up, she could see his eyes were glazed over with moisture. The guilt wrapped around her, squeezing her like a rubber band wound too tightly around a bundle of nerves. The helplessness soon followed, and she stared past her nearly empty coffee cup at the speckled pattern of the linoleum for what seemed like an hour.

"So we're going to get a divorce because I can't be what you want."

"You want a divorce?" he gasped suddenly, as if he had been hit square in the gut with a sack of bricks. She said it as if it were something already decided, an inevitable conclusion that had been predetermined, maybe for years, that they were powerless to stop. To him, it was a devastating worst case scenario, one that would rip his family apart at the seams just when he was sure he had gotten it right.

"No," she said firmly. "Emily is not going to grow up the way I did."

"So that's it, you're fine with how things are between us?" he asked, challenging her with every syllable. "To you, this is ok? We just won't ever talk to each other, and we'll sleep in separate bedrooms and somehow, it'll be so much better for Emily that her parents decided to hang on by a thread just for her?"

"Damn it," she said, looking up from her now lukewarm coffee and meeting his eyes. "I can lose you. I've done it before. I've lost things, but Emily hasn't and she's not going to. I won't let her lose her father. Whatever you and I become…maybe I won't like it, but I'll handle it. If I take Emily's family away from her though, just because I'm mad at you…she won't recover from that."

He stared at her, shock plainly written all over his face. His voice nearly broke as he asked her, "You really think I could leave her?"

She cocked her head to the side and shrugged.

"I am never going to leave her," he insisted. "Never. And I don't want to leave you."

"But you will," she pressed.

"I don't want to be with someone who doesn't love me," he said, feeling defeated. "But I do love you. I don't want a divorce."

"I don't either."

"I know," Derek replied. "I just wish your reason for staying in this was more than not wanting to end up like your parents."

"What do you want from me?" she asked helplessly.

"I don't know," he sighed. "I don't know, Meredith. Maybe you're right. Maybe this was a mistake coming here, trying to force something that you don't even think is there anymore. Maybe it is all just too much."

"I don't know what I think," she admitted. "I want it to still be there."

She got up from her place at the kitchen counter, setting her empty mug in the sink. For the first time since he woke up, Derek moved off the couch and into the kitchen. He opened one of the cabinets and got a mug out for himself, pouring it three quarters of the way full with coffee. Meredith opened the fridge and set the carton of half and half down next to him, then moved over to make room for him next to her.

Derek fixed his coffee and joined Meredith at the counter, recognizing the small peace offering for what it was. They were quiet for awhile, Derek silently finishing his first cup of coffee and pouring another while Meredith stared straight ahead into nothing, while each came to the realization that the other was not unbreakable.

"Are you going to hurt me again?" she asked, breaking the silence as she looked up at him with sudden tears in her eyes. "If we get things back to how they used to be, are you going to go back to Seattle and forget all about it? Cause if you are, I'd rather just not at all. I can't do this again."

"I won't if you won't," he promised. "But you have to try for me, not just for Emily. If you're going to stay, you need to stay because you want to be my wife, not just because you want me to be Emily's dad. I'll do better too, ok?" Derek said. "Once we go back, I'll be better. Just don't force me away."

"Ok," she conceded quietly, looking right at him though her eyes still appeared distant. She brushed a few tears away and gave him a weak smile, but she couldn't help but feel a little resentful. Somehow he had picked a fight, the most volatile they had had in months, and had called her on everything she'd been doing over the past year. Deep down, she knew what he said about her was true, but how had she had so little time or finesse to say the things that she needed to say? He still emerged from this looking like the McDreamy that he so loved to be. She knew Derek and she knew that he liked to be perfect at everything he did, but, to put it quite simply, he wasn't. He messed up. A lot. But somehow, his voice could take on that silky tone and he could look at her in just the right way, and make her feel repentant for things she still didn't necessarily believe were wrong. Her mother would have never apologized for gunning for chief resident. Cristina wouldn't have either. Actually, all the women she looked up to would never have done what she agreed to do this summer. But then again, the women she looked up to were the poster children for failed relationships, and in some of her darkest moments, Meredith was certain that Ellis considered her very existence to be a great mistake.

The sound of bare feet on the linoleum shook Meredith out of her thoughts. Emily stood in the kitchen, hair sticking out in all directions, tousled from her usual restless sleep. She clutched Bear in one hand, his feet dragging on the floor as she padded over to her parents.

"Hey, Em," Meredith said. "Good morning. How'd you sleep?"

"Good," she replied. "Mommy, I hungry," she said as she reached up and Meredith pulled her into her lap.

Meredith kissed the top of her head and sat her down on the kitchen counter, facing the two of them. Emily let go of Bear and sat him down next to her. "Did you say good morning to Daddy?" she prompted.

"G'morning, Daddy," Emily smiled, and Derek reached out, cupping the back of her head as he kissed her forehead. "I have my juice now?" she asked. Derek went to the fridge to fix her a sippy cup.

"Why are you sad?" Emily asked Meredith. She stretched her arm towards Meredith, her delicate fingers gently touching her mother's face.

"I'm not sad, Em," Meredith shook her head reassuringly. "Mommy's not sad."

"How come you got the water in your eyes?" Emily asked, dragging her fingertips across Meredith's face towards her eyes.

"I'm just still a little sleepy," she told her daughter. "I'm ok, Em," she promised. "Here, sit back, Daddy's getting you your juice."

Emily paid no attention and continued to lean forward, arms outstretched towards Meredith. She wrapped her arms around Meredith's neck and slid her little butt off the countertop and back into Meredith's lap. "I can kiss it better, Mommy," she said assuredly. She puckered up and kissed Meredith's mouth and eyes, before taking her fingers and streaking some of the tears down Meredith's face herself, until they were so thin that all that could be seen of them were the watermark stains they left behind on her skin. "See?"

"That's much better," Meredith assured her, smiling through some lingering tears for the first time that day.

"I can do it, Daddy, I did it," Emily nodded proudly as she accepted her juice from Derek.

"You made Mommy happy," he said. He sat down next to them and watched Meredith hold on to Emily as if she were the last real thing in the world. In that moment, Derek viewed her more sympathetically than he had in he couldn't remember how long. When she looked at him, eyes still a bit moist, his own share of bitter guilt crept into his throat like bile. His hand found the small of her back, resting there in a sign of apology and assurance. He rubbed slow circles around in the first time they had really touched in at least a few days.

"What do you think, Emily? Should we go explore today?" Meredith asked suddenly.

"You want to go out?"

"Yeah, well, we haven't really seen any of the town yet, except for what we passed on the way in. We could walk around and see what there is to do," she said, "If you want to, I mean."

"I want to," he replied. "Bean, what do you think? Should we go exploring?"

"Ok," Emily agreed excitedly. "We go right now?"

"As soon as you get your clothes on," Meredith said, and at that, Emily was wriggling out of her grasp as fast as she could. She darted upstairs, juice cup in hand, like she couldn't get ready quickly enough.

"You want to go out?" Derek repeated in happy disbelief.

"We can take her out to breakfast. There's got to be a little place around here that makes pancakes," Meredith said. "I'm going to go help her before she tears that room apart. We'll go in 15 minutes, ok?"

She left her place at the kitchen counter and headed for the stairs when Derek stopped her. She turned to face him and relief washed over her. He was finally looking at her like he didn't resent her for everything that had happened. Like he understood that she didn't want it to happen and she couldn't have controlled it with all the power in the world. Like he had stopped blaming her, even though he had already sworn repeatedly that he didn't. Maybe now they could start to chip away at the hard nugget of grief and regret that had gotten under their skin and in between them in some cold hospital rooms months before.

"Thank you," Derek breathed in such sincere gratitude that she felt tears prick at the back of her eyes again.

She shrugged and offered him a weak smile. "I'm going to go get her ready, and I'll meet you back down here in 15 minutes."


	4. I should take to bleeding inwardly

" _Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane? … Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that core of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly." – Jane Eyre_

* * *

Almost effortlessly, they navigated their new surroundings from the comfort of their SUV and found the tiny center of town within a few minutes. The town encompassed everything about a place Meredith would have liked to grow up in. Tourists and locals walked, jogged, or rode bikes along wide sidewalks on either side of the main thoroughfare, shaded by looming trees. It seemed like the residential properties, small Cape Cods and ranches, were situated on side streets. The street they cruised leisurely down now was instead lined with cutesy pastel-painted shops, all open for business early on a Saturday morning as the weekend crowds began to trickle in. Admittedly, it was a tourist town, so there were plenty of trinket shops selling cheap candy and merchandise with the town's name plastered on it, but there were also several boutiques and specialty stores, and even a tiny movie theater.

When they spotted a small corner diner with yellow awnings and the door already open, they decided to try it out. Derek dropped Meredith and Emily off at the door and left to go find a parking spot, and Meredith escorted Emily up the three steps and into the restaurant. For an unassuming establishment, the morning crowd was packed into the place, and very few tables were available. Waitresses bustled around with trays piled high with pancakes and eggs, and chatter seemed to move not only within each party, but from table to table. It seemed like this was the place to go for breakfast in this town.

"Welcome to Althea's," the hostess, a friendly teenage girl smiled at Meredith. "Just the two of you today?" she asked.

"Oh, no, it'll be three. My husband's just parking the car."

"Oh, ok! Well, right this way." She led them to a small table in the corner with place settings for two, and quickly set an extra place on the side. "Do you need a highchair?"

Emily stuck her bottom lip out and looked expectantly up at Meredith. "I am a big. girl."

"You're right, you are a big girl," Meredith soothed. "We'll just take an extra chair, if that's ok," she told the girl. "Do you need help getting up there, Em?"

"I do it myself," Emily assured her. It took a little bit of effort, and her long yellow sundress made it slightly more difficult, but she managed to climb into her chair no worse for the wear.

The hostess set two adult menus and a kids' menu with some crayons down on the table. "Amber will be with you shortly. Enjoy your breakfast."

"Em, what would you like to eat?" Meredith asked, taking Emily's menu and reading the choices off. "They have pancakes, French toast, scrambled eggs, waffles, or cereal."

"Pantakes," Emily replied, taking her crayons and inspecting them individually before laying them out on the table in front of her.

"Are you sure? You just had pancakes yesterday."

"I want pantakes."

"Ok, well pancakes it is. What should I get?"

"What do you like, Mommy?" she questioned matter-of-factly.

"This is a cute place," Derek interrupted, sliding into the empty seat between his wife and his daughter. "Did you order yet?"

"No, we just sat down," Meredith replied. She barely lifted her head as she continued to look over the menu.

"I'm in the mood for some eggs. What do you think, Mer? Sunny side up?" She groaned, and he laughed. "Sausage?"

She rolled her eyes, her nose wrinkling in a mixture of amusement and disgust. "I need something loaded with carbs," she said definitively.

"How bout some hashbrowns?" he prodded with a playful smirk.

"Stop!" she chuckled, smacking him in the chest, which made everything even funnier to him. "Oh God, never again," she shook her head. "I'm getting pancakes."

"Not ready take the plunge again. I understand," he grinned, basking in the afterglow of that 30 seconds of banter. It was just a glimpse of how it used to be, but it felt like enough to get him through another week of exhausting, heartbreaking silences.

"I'm eating pantakes again too," Emily nodded along with the conversation, her eyes fixed on her parents. "What are you talking about?" she asked, a little frustrated with being on the outside of the joke.

"When you were inside Mommy's belly, that's all she wanted to eat for breakfast. Every day."

"That's what she wanted!" Meredith cried defensively.

"Hi, I'm Amber," a girl who looked to be about seventeen or eighteen interrupted. "I'll be your server today. Can I start you off with something to drink?"

"Actually, I think we're ready to order. I'm going to have the blueberry pancakes, and water is fine," Meredith said. "And she'll have a short stack of plain pancakes and milk."

"Ok," Amber said briskly as she took down the order. "And for you, sir?"

"Two eggs, sunny side up, with sausage and hashbrowns on the side," he said, the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. "And a cup of coffee, please."

"Ok, I'll put that right in for you," Amber replied cheerfully. "It should be out in a few minutes and I'll be right back with your drinks."

"I hope you enjoy them," Meredith said, joking sarcasm flavoring every word. "How you can even look at it, I'll never know."

"I'm not the one that ate it every morning for nine months," he replied simply. "I could go for some toast too. Did Em like that? I forget."

"That's about all she got the first three months," Meredith grimaced.

"That's right, before we single-handedly began supporting the livestock industry of America," he smiled. "Did we ever get your cholesterol checked after that?"

"My cholesterol was fine," she laughed.

"Well, Dr. Atkins would have been pleased with you."

"You're right, I would have had the blessing of a semi-reputable physician."

"Well, I am a very reputable physician," he grinned cockily.

"You are an A-S-S," she shot back.

"I just considered it a success to wean you off pizza and grilled cheese when you were pregnant," he shrugged with a teasing smile.

Amber set their drinks down in front of them and assured them that their food would be only a few minutes more.

"What's pregnant?" Emily interrupted, having had enough of being left out of the conversation.

Derek was a little taken aback by the bluntness of Emily's question, but he recovered quickly. "Pregnant is when a woman has a baby inside her belly, like when you were inside Mommy's belly," he explained.

"I _not_ a baby," Emily grumbled in irritation.

"You were a long time ago," Meredith said gently. "And before you were born, you were in my belly for a little while."

"And then I came out?"

"And then you came out," she finished. "Thank you," she directed her attention to the waitress for a minute while Amber put hot plates of food in front of them.

Derek immediately took Emily's knife and fork, cutting her pancakes into small bites for her. "Hey, Bean, want to see something?" he asked as he cut.

"What?"

He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet, flipping it open and pulling out a small photo. With his fingertip, he traced the outline of a very pregnant Meredith, standing profile in sweatpants and a scrub top with her hands on her swollen stomach and a half smile on her face. She always had that look on her face when she was humoring him. "That's you in there," he said. Emily knelt on her chair, peering at the picture with rapt curiosity.

"No it's not," Emily giggled.

"Yes it is," Derek ruffled her hair. "Before you were born."

"What are you showing her?" Meredith asked. She got up from her seat just slightly and placed her hand on his shoulder, looking over him at the picture in his hand. "Oh God, you keep that in your wallet?"

"This is one of my favorite pictures of you," he explained.

"I in there, Mommy," Emily pointed. "Before I got born."

At the sound of Emily's voice, and the look of confusion and delighted surprise on her face, Meredith squeezed Derek's shoulder just briefly. She gave him an inch with that, just a hint of affection, and he could have taken it and ran a mile.

"How about this one, Em?" Derek said, pulling another photo from between folds of cash and cards and continuing to ignore his breakfast for the time being. It was just another small wallet-sized picture, with worn edges, like it had been pulled out and looked at many times. In it, Meredith was fast asleep on a bed that she recognized as part of the on-call room, still wearing her scrubs like she'd been caught in the middle of a work day. She cradled Emily, who looked to be about three or four months old, with both hands on her stomach. Emily, also asleep wearing just a onesie, balled one fist against her cheek while the other hand tightly gripped Meredith's hair.

"That's when you were a baby," Derek showed her. "That's you."

"That not me," Emily shook her head. "I'm Emily Grace Shepherd."

"That's you," Derek insisted lightheartedly. "And that's Mommy holding you."

"That my Mommy," Emily cried, recognizing Meredith instantly, but still not quite believing that the little baby in the photo could possibly be her.

"When did you take this?" Meredith asked in disbelief.

"You fell asleep with her in the on-call room, remember?"

"I remember, but I didn't know you took our picture."

"The daycare paged me saying they tried to get you and you didn't answer, but you had taken the baby to feed her. So I went to look for you two and there you were. I took this before I woke you up."

"And you just carried your camera with you at all times?" she asked incredulously.

"Camera phone," he shrugged. "I love this picture."

After they finished their breakfast and paid their check, they decided to take a walk and see what the town had to offer. Emily took hold of Meredith and Derek's hands and alternated between pulling them forward as she tried to run ahead, and laughing as she went limp and let them bear all her weight to swing her up.

Meredith looked briefly at each shop's window as they passed by, planning which places to come back to later. The candy shop with the homemade fudge and apples drizzled in caramel. The gallery that boasted beautiful watercolors of docksides and waves lapping at sandy beaches. The toy store with enough sand toys to keep Emily occupied for months.

"Em, what should we do today?" she asked, suddenly completely willing to leave the plans for this beautiful day up to a two-year-old with curious eyes and a husband with big ideas.

"Would you like a new book?" Derek asked Emily, motioning to a tiny new and used bookstore.

The store itself felt a little cramped, but it was only because there were thousands of books stacked on the shelves, perfectly organized alphabetically and by category. Whimsical paintings of seaside landscapes adorned the walls above the shelves, and Emily must have thought it was her own personal maze because she took off running through the aisles.

"Emily Grace," Meredith scolded. "Come here, please." Emily peeked out from behind one of the shelves and walked back towards her mother with her tail between her legs. Meredith squatted down to her level and took her hand. "Look at me. We don't run in here, ok? Only walking, and we use our quiet voices. Do you understand?"

Emily nodded apologetically. "I sorry, Mommy," she said, falling into Meredith's arms in a hug.

"It's ok," Meredith soothed. "Now would you like to pick out a new book with me and Daddy?"

"Yes."

"Ok, go ahead," Meredith urged, scooting her forward.

In the small children's section, Derek and Meredith sat down on the floor while Emily walked back and forth and started to browse through the selection of books. "What this one?" Emily asked, handing a pink paperback to Meredith.

" _Corduroy_ ," Meredith read the title. "It looks like it's about a bear, Em." She looked at Derek helplessly. "I'm not sure what it's about."

"It's about a bear and a little girl who wants to take the bear home from the store, but first he has to find a button," Derek said.

Emily put the book to the side and reached for another. "What this?" she passed another book to Meredith.

" _Where the Wild Things Are,_ " Meredith read.

"Daddy, what this one about?" Emily asked, turning away from Meredith towards her father.

"It's about a little boy named Max who gets sent to bed without his dinner and then he pretends that there are wild things in his room, but there's really not. It's just pretend," he emphasized. "You'd like that one, Bean."

"No, I not want that one," she decided. Emily passed the book to Meredith and reached for another. "What's this one?"

"This is called _Waiting for Baby,_ " Meredith said.

"That mommy got a baby in her belly like you, Mommy," Emily pointed in triumphant understanding to the illustrated cover.

"You're right, she does, but not like me," Meredith explained softly.

"I get this?"

"Well this is really more for kids who are having new babies in their families," Meredith said a bit uneasily.

"I have a new baby?"

"No," she said calmly, yet immediately.

The tension in her voice got Derek's attention, and he focused on Meredith for a moment. He watched her. Watched her, visibly stressed in that instant, just from a harmless question from a two-year-old. Watched her push the hair off her face and cup her head in her hands for a second. Heard her sigh and watched her look back at Emily with exhaustion in her eyes.

"What about a different book?" she suggested.

Emily seemed satisfied with Meredith's request and went on with the process of choosing her new book. "What this one?" she asked, pulling another book off the shelf.

"Oh, _The Giving Tree_ ," Derek smiled, taking his eyes off Meredith for a moment. "This was Daddy's favorite book when I was a kid, Bean."

"You not a kid, Daddy," Emily shook her head knowingly.

"Well not now, I'm not, but I used to be. And this was my favorite book. My Dad used to read it to me."

"Daddy, you read it to _me_ ," Emily insisted, thrusting the book into his hands.

"Is this the one you want, Em?" Meredith asked.

"Yes," she nodded. "I get this."

Back at home, after some playing and a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Derek snuggled Emily onto the couch with him for her first reading of _The Giving Tree_ before her napMeredith joined them, eager also to hear the story that Derek had loved so much as a child. Somehow, getting bounced from babysitter to babysitter, Meredith hadn't ever heard the story of _The Giving Tree._ In fact, when Derek had named this as his favorite, it was only then that Meredith realized she didn't have a favorite book from her childhood. At least not one that she could remember her mother or father reading to her. The only stories she knew were the ones she read to Emily.

"Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy," Derek read softly aloud to Emily, once she had finally settled on his lap.

He continued on through the pages, weaving the threads of the story together. The little boy loved the tree, and the tree was willing to give him everything she had to make him happy. Somehow, no matter what she gave, it was still not enough for the boy, and he always asked for more.

"'Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in the city. Then you will have money and you will be happy.' And so the boy climbed up the tree and gathered her apples and carried them away. And the tree was happy. But the boy stayed away for a long time...and the tree was sad."

"Why did the boy go away?" Emily interrupted briefly.

"He felt like he had to go away so he could get what he wanted."

"Why?"

"Because he thought that would make him happy."

"Why?"

"Because everyone wants to be happy, right?" Emily nodded. "But did it make the tree happy?" Derek asked.

"No," Emily shook her head. "The tree is sad."

Derek resumed with the story. He read about how the boy sold all the tree's apples, and then came back for her branches to build a house. When the boy came back again from a long time away, he only wanted the tree to help him go even further away. The tree offered him her trunk, and the boy built a boat and sailed away. Not until the boy was a very old man did he return to the tree.

"'I am sorry,' sighed the tree. 'I wish that I could give you something...but I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry...,'" Derek read with real emotion in his voice. "'I don't need very much now,' said the boy. 'Just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.' 'Well,' said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could. 'Well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.' And the boy did. And the tree was happy," Derek finished, shifting Emily's weight in his arms a bit as he closed the book.

"The tree was happy?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, the tree was very happy when the boy came back in the end."

"The tree loves that boy."

"Yes, she does. I think more than anything in the whole world, don't you?"

"I sink so too," Emily agreed. "Why did that boy chop the tree down?"

"He thought that if he took things from the tree, then he would be happy."

"That boy not share," Emily observed.

"You're right, he's not sharing." Derek asked.

"But the tree always wants to give," Meredith interjected. "Because she loves the little boy and that makes her happy."

"That's ok, Mommy?"

"Yeah, that's ok," she murmured. She sighed loudly, trying to mask the few tears in her eyes and clear the lump in her throat, and reached for Emily. "What do you think, Emmie? Nap time?"

"Ok, I sleep now," Emily agreed. She crawled off of Derek's lap and into Meredith's. "You sleep in my bed with me?"

She allowed her eyes to meet Derek's for a moment, and he looked at her expectantly. "No, I'm not very tired today." Meredith wrapped her arms around Emily and kissed her cheeks and the crease of her neck. "Want me to take your shoes off for you?"

"I do it myself!" She grimaced, trying to push her sandals off her feet.

"Here, let me help you," Meredith offered after a moment or two. She tried to loosen the buckles a bit but Emily stopped her.

"I do it, I _do_ it!" Emily insisted, shrieking. Meredith backed up and after a few more moments of fiddling, Emily slipped the shoes off and they clunked to the floor. "I ready for my nap now," she said with a proud smile on her face.

"Ok." Meredith pulled Emily into her arms, shifting the weight of her on her hip before she settled. "Say night-night to Daddy."

"Night-night, Daddy."

"Night, Bean." He stood up briefly and kissed her cheek.

"I see you when I wake up."

"I'll see you when you wake up," Derek agreed.

When Meredith came back downstairs a few minutes later, Derek had reclined back onto the couch with a book of his own. His flip flops rested on the floor next to Emily's and he curled up into the pillows. His gray t-shirt rode up a little, revealing just a hint of toned stomach and chest hair.

He didn't speak, but moved over to make room for her next to him. She sat down on the other end of the couch though, facing him. She adjusted her navy tank top briefly and scrunched her feet under his. Her nervous deep breath he couldn't help but hear scraped at his insides.

He swallowed. "Did she go down, ok?" he asked. His eyes took on that soft quality to them, like they did when he looked at Emily, or when he told Meredith that he loved her. He closed his book and placed it on the floor.

"Yeah, she's asleep. She loved that book, Derek. I was rubbing her back and she was going on and on about the tree. I finally had to tell her that it was time to go to sleep and no more talking."

"I can't believe I just read it to her. I can remember my Dad reading it to me," he said with a wistful smile. "That was just our thing. My sisters all had their own books with him."

"I'm glad we got it then," Meredith said comfortingly.

"Yeah," he murmured. "Why didn't you want her to have that other book?" he asked.

Her stomach twisted within her, and she shrugged, looking away for a moment. "Is that how you knew all those other books?" she asked quickly. "Your Dad read them to you?"

"Yeah…. Well, _Corduroy_ was Nancy's. _Where the Wild Things Are_ was Kathleen's."

"Funny, I'd think it would be the other way around," Meredith prodded playfully. "What were Maggie and Anne's?"

"Maggie's was _Caps for Sale_ , and Anne's was _Mr. Popper's Penguins_. Mer…," he whispered, cupping the insole of his foot around the back of her ankle. "Stop," he pleaded.

She shook her head rapidly, and turned away. When she faced him again, tears glazed her eyes. She certainly didn't expect to cry so much on this trip. She did better with numbness, and burying and denial. But something about this house, and Emily telling her about the Giving Tree, and Derek essentially begging her…it had rubbed her raw.

"Mer," he nudged. "If she wanted that book, she could have had it."

"I know," she said defensively. "I know, I know. Damn it," she muttered tearfully.

"I still wonder too," he admitted.

She drew her knees up to her chest and away from him, and cradled her head in her hands, trying her best to keep her crying as discreet and quiet as possible. Derek watched her mournfully, but didn't touch her, partly because he knew she needed her space, but mostly because he wasn't ready to go to her. He could show her the vulnerability he felt, the helplessness he experienced, but to allow her to touch a shaking shoulder or have teardrops stain her shirt – it was still too much. He had become used to grieving on his own. He had to hand it to Meredith; denial and powering through worked, to a degree. But in moments like this one, curled up in regret at opposite ends of the sofa, not even a bout of the severest amnesia could have taken this sadness away from him.

"I wonder how Em would have been," Derek continued, against his better judgment. "I wonder if she would have liked it. She's pretty good at sharing now," he trailed off. "I think she would have. Liked being a big sister, I mean. If it was a boy, I was going to take him to Yankees games, when they played the Mariners. And if it was a girl…well, I was going to take her to Yankees games too. Me, and Em, and the baby," he laughed a little then, despite his wavering voice. "And their book was going to be _Love You Forever_."

She coughed loudly on a choking sob, and turned on her side, like the grief had wrung her out, and left her to dry. She wiped a few tears out of her eyes and coughed once more, holding her hands close to her chest. "What's Em's book?" she asked, refusing to look at him, or even turn over.

" _Guess How Much I Love You_."

"I like that one," she breathed. She shut her eyes tightly, but tears oozed out despite her best efforts. "That's a good one." She clutched at the back of her thigh in an attempt at distraction, anything to stop the crying.

She had done well up to that point in her life, done well to push the distressing and the tragic away and to avoid. Feelings were messy. A nuisance. Tear-inducing, gut-wrenching. She picked and chose what she wanted to feel for most of her life – the blissful feeling of an arm wrapped around her in bed, the solid weight of an infant on her chest. A ring around her finger and a scalpel in her hand. It had always been a choice - how much she wanted to feel - and when it came to the unpleasantries of abandonment issues, lack of self-worth, and that early loss of Derek, Jose Cuervo did a hell of a job. But she couldn't help but be thrown for a loop when a loss like this one wormed its way inside her heart, and nipped and scratched until it bled, even almost a year later. And all the tequila in the world couldn't take the edge off that.

Derek had never seen her cry like that, literally curling into the pain like it was physically hurting her. He'd seen desperation, loss, embarrassment, joy…but what he saw now was something different entirely – a hopeless sadness in her that ripped him at the seams. Another kind of guilt burrowed inside him now, under the hard layer of blame and resentment, and he softened.

He sat up a bit, inched forward, and forgave her just a little when he took her hand. She continued to look at the floor rather than at him, and he didn't speak to her. But he laced his fingers through hers and she squeezed just briefly, and for a second, they finally communicated.

I know. Me too. It hurts.


	5. Oh, life can be strange

_Oh, life can be strange  
Good and bad in so many ways  
And in time you will find  
That things are not always what they seem_

* * *

ONE YEAR EARLIER…

It was springtime in Seattle and they had been graced with a string of sunny, warm days lasting for almost two weeks in the middle of May. Meals at the hospital used to be somewhat of a when you can, where you can experience, but now that they had settled into their residency, and even had their own interns, Meredith and Cristina could often manage a whole hour for their lunch.

"So I hear Olitzer is gunning for chief resident, and yeah, fuck that," Cristina smirked. She set down her tray at an empty table, and Meredith slid into the available chair next to hers. At a little after two o'clock in the afternoon, the majority of the lunch crowd had cleared out of the cafeteria.

"Olitzer?"

"Yeah, orthopedic guy. Kinda tall, brown hair…overuses the word 'swell.'"

"No, I know who he is, I just didn't know he was going for chief resident," Meredith replied.

"Well he's going for it, but he doesn't have a cat in hell's chance of getting it," Cristina said with confidence.

"He might." Meredith shrugged. "I hear he's pretty good."

"Meredith, please, everyone in this hospital knows that it's either you or me next year, and all the smart ones know that I'm going to kick your ass. Lovingly, of course."

"We'll see about that," Meredith shot back with a cocky smile.

"So how's the McFamily?" Cristina asked, reclining in her chair and taking a bite out of an apple. Cristina had never been an affectionate person by any means, but for some reason Emily adored her, and though Cristina had never said so in so many words, the feeling was mutual.

"Em's doing ok. Derek is fine too, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I haven't seen him since yesterday morning, he got held up in that head-on collision that came in yesterday night."

"And you didn't?" Meredith had chosen neurosurgery as her specialty almost two years ago, and since then, she had become a rising star in the field. Multiple head traumas weren't something she was likely to pass up.

"Somebody had to get the baby," Meredith shrugged. "Speaking of, I should go check on her after lunch. She felt a little warm this morning."

"God only knows what's getting passed around at that daycare," Cristina mused. "I was up there the other day. There's snot everywhere."

"They do produce quite a bit of snot," Meredith agreed. "So, Olitzer wants to be chief resident…."

"Yeah, _wants_ to be. Never _will_ be," Cristina responded emphatically.

"I don't know. Remember that kid who came in last year? Legs bent the wrong way in some freak bus accident? He flew solo?"

"Yeah, I do, but I don't remember the four hundred other more boring knee surgeries he's done. I do remember me doing that quadruple bypass last month, and I'm sure I'll remember for years to come the surgery I'm scrubbing in on tomorrow morning. Taking out a tumor the size of a baseball in this kid's lung. Mer, you should have seen it, it's huge, but we're going to get it all" she trailed off, stopping when she saw Meredith looking at her a little strangely. "What?"

"Nothing," Meredith replied immediately, shaken out of her thoughts. "Tumor the size of a baseball?" she tried to recover.

"Meredith," Cristina started. "You know as well as I do that you'd roll over Olitzer in a chief resident race any day of the week. What do you really want to talk about?"

"Olitzer," Meredith said with as much emphasis as she could muster. "Or your huge tumor. Whatever, you pick."

Cristina just sat there, looking at Meredith and waiting. Meredith opened her mouth several times like she wanted to say something, but closed it just as quickly. Finally, on the fourth or fifth time she did it, she finally blurted it out. "I'm pregnant," she said, all in one quick breath, a slow smile creeping across her face.

"Wow," Cristina said, genuinely taken aback. "Congratulations. I didn't know you were trying."

"We weren't," Meredith shrugged. "I just found out yesterday. It just kind of happened, I guess."

"Should I look into remedial sex ed for you?" Cristina joked. "You'll wind up with nine kids and then you'll tell me that it just happened. Just when I thought I was close to getting Shepherd dialed back down to a normal level of happy."

"I haven't told him yet. I'm trying to think of a cute way to tell him."

"Oh, God," Cristina groaned. "You're not going to make Emily wear one of those 'I'm the big sister' t-shirts, are you?"

"I don't know, maybe," Meredith said defensively. "Something cute. Help me think of something!"

"Ok, I am Cristina and you are Meredith. I think you are, anyway. I know your uterus is making you all fluffy and happy inside, but I don't think of cute sayings. He knocked you up twice in less than three years – why don't you just ask him to buy you a mini van?" she said sarcastically, just as her pager began beeping urgently. "Damn it," she muttered, glancing down at the device. "I swear to God, if I'm not watching Pastern like a hawk, he manages to get into some irreparable disaster in about 20 minutes. I seriously might kill him. Would you harbor me as a fugitive?" she asked as she darted away.

"I'd have to see what Derek would say about that," Meredith teased.

"I'd do it for you!" Cristina said with mock hurt in her voice before disappearing around a corner.

Meredith finished up with the rest of her lunch, dumping the tray's contents in the trashcan. She made her way upstairs to the hospital daycare, a godsend in her eyes. Neither Meredith nor Derek were prepared, or willing, to quit their jobs, so to have a place where they knew Emily was safe and well taken care of eased their minds. Brenda, the woman who ran the daycare, didn't mind parents stopping by to see how their children were doing during the course of the day, especially when they were scheduled for a long shift and it might be 12 or 13 hours of separation.

When Meredith got up there, she heard frantic cries that she immediately recognized as her daughter's. She gingerly stepped around strewn about toys and the children who were playing with them, and found Brenda holding a screaming Emily.

"Oh, good, you're here," Brenda smiled apologetically.

"Yeah, I was just coming to check on her. She felt like she might have a little fever this morning when I dropped her off. What's wrong?"

"Mama," Emily wailed hysterically. Meredith extended her arms and Emily readily left Brenda's embrace for hers.

"Well she definitely has a temperature now, and you know, I think she might have an ear infection. She keeps pulling," Brenda said, tugging on her own ear to demonstrate. "She just woke up and was upset."

Emily's little face was flushed bright red as she clawed her way up Meredith's torso like a koala bear, burying her face in Meredith's neck and grabbing for her hair. She was crying hard enough that her wails had become intermittent screams, followed by hiccupping silences as she took in another breath. Meredith wrapped her arms around her child, supporting her weight with her right arm as her left hand rubbed Emily's back in slow, gentle circles.

"It's ok," Meredith assured her as she sunk into an empty rocking chair. Emily's entire body was hot, and her curly hair was matted down in places with sweat. "Mommy's here, Mommy's here," she crooned. She pressed her lips to the top of Emily's head as she flexed her feet and rocked the chair slowly back and forth. "Shhh, it's ok." She continued with every trick she had learned over the past 20 months that usually calmed Emily down, but it seemed like all she really wanted was to be held.

Brenda did the best she could to keep the other children away from Meredith and Emily while Meredith tended to her daughter. After awhile, Emily had either started to feel better or had simply exhausted herself from crying, and had mostly quieted down. She sobbed occasionally, like she knew that it still hurt very much but she had resigned herself to the fact that there was nothing she could do about it. She whimpered as Meredith moved her just a bit to get a better look at her ear. Emily's skin was still quite flushed from her screaming, but Meredith did see a bit of fluid oozing from her left ear.

"I'm going to take you home," Meredith whispered against Emily's skin. "How does that sound?" Emily nodded tiredly, clutching Meredith like she didn't ever want to let go.

She explained the situation to Brenda, who nodded sympathetically, and patted Emily's back before handing Emily's things to Meredith and letting them go. In the hallway, Meredith balanced Emily on one hip and slung her bag over the other shoulder as she carried Emily back down to surgery to a nurses' station and asked them to page Derek.

"Dr. Grey," the nurse said. "We were actually just about to page you. There is a trauma en route, severe head injuries from a fall at a construction site. ETA 10 minutes."

Meredith sighed anxiously. "Can't Dr. Shepherd take care of it?"

"He is, as soon as the rig gets here with the patient. But he's already scrubbed in on the craniotomy he had scheduled this afternoon. Subdural hematoma. He needs you to take over."

"Can't one of the other residents finish it?" she asked, her hand immediately on Emily's back as the child started to whimper and tug on her ear again.

"Mama," Emily cried.

"I know, I know," Meredith hushed soothingly. "Listen, I can't do it," she said to the nurse. "I actually have to leave and I wanted to know if you could clear my other surgeries for today. What about one of the other residents?"

"It's Memorial Day weekend, Dr. Grey. Dr. Zeller and Dr. Ulrich took their families to the coast for the holiday."

"Ok," Meredith pressed, thinking frantically. "All right, I'll be back in ten minutes, but push my other surgeries to tomorrow.

She adjusted Emily's bag, and started back on the same path she had just taken, back up to the daycare. Most of the time, she loved being a doctor. She really did. But something felt wrong here. She shouldn't have been leaving her sick baby so she could tend to someone else. The thought that her mother might not have felt the same way briefly danced across her mind, but she shoved it away and focused her attention back on Emily.

"I'm sorry," she murmured as she walked the toddler back to the daycare. "This won't take long, I promise. Miss Brenda is going to take good care of you, and I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Mama," Emily grumbled irritably. She had lost the extensive vocabulary Meredith and Derek were slowly working with her to build in a confusing blur of sickness. Emily uttered that one word, Meredith's name, repeatedly all the way back to the daycare, until all Meredith could do was counter it with, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

A few minutes later, Meredith was beside Derek in the OR as he gave her the particulars of this surgery before leaving to tend to the construction accident. He explained where he was in the procedure, and what needed to be done from there.

"How long do you think you're going to be?" Meredith found herself asking.

"I'm not sure; it depends. Why?"

"Em is sick. I was just about to take her home, but if you think you'll be done first, can you go get her?"

"You probably only have about an hour, maybe two, left here," Derek motioned to the patient. "I think this guy fell three stories. He's pretty banged up, but I'll see what I can do. Is she ok?"

"She's hurting. Cranky. I'm pretty sure she has an ear infection. She just needs some antibiotics."

"My schedule's clear after this trauma. I'll come home right after, but I think you'll be done first."

"I'll see you at home then," Meredith smiled, and though her mask covered most of her face, Derek could still tell by the way her eyes crinkled at the sides.

* * *

Later that night, Meredith had finally gotten Emily to sleep after a long afternoon and evening. She had managed to get one of her friends in pediatrics to see Emily quickly on their way out, and with one look at her, he diagnosed her with an ear infection. He recommended ear drops for pain relief, and Tylenol as needed, but didn't expect that she would need antibiotics.

Meredith collapsed into bed, tired despite it still being fairly early. Her hand touched her stomach just briefly, fingertips tracing over a few lingering silver stretch marks, and wondered how she was going to do all of this again. Emily thrilled her and exhausted her, just like her career simultaneously thrilled her and exhausted her in ways she didn't know were possible. Two in three years. Maybe she _should_ get a mini van. Derek hated them. He said even the thought of owning one made him feel old. She'd have to twist Derek's arm to get him to agree to buying one. Maybe Olitzer could set the bones afterward. He wouldn't be busy being chief resident. Cristina would though. A toddler and an infant. Maybe a mini van. Soccer mom. Two in three years.

Her breath caught in her throat, and her heart started to pound. She kneaded slow circles on her stomach with her fist, trying to calm herself down. But there would be more ear infections. More short days at work. Caught off guard. More of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

She splayed her palm flat across her stomach, trying to hold something, but nothing was there. It was still flat, tight from early morning sessions at the gym after Emily was born. But knowing something – someone, she corrected herself – was in there made it completely different.

The bedroom door eased open, quietly as if Derek had fully expected to find her asleep when he got in. He shucked off his pants, and unbuttoned his shirt, hanging both back up in the closet. He rummaged through the drawers in only his boxers, and after pulling a t-shirt on, crawled into bed with Meredith.

"Hey," he mumbled sleepily. He wrapped his arms around her, and she pulled him close, his stomach flush against her back.

"Hey," she yawned. "Em has an ear infection."

"Ok. Did anyone write her a prescription?"

"No, Brennan just said to give her Tylenol as needed, and some ear drops. She didn't need antibiotics this time."

"I checked on her before I came in here. She's asleep."

"Finally," Meredith sighed. "What happened to construction guy?"

"He fell off a scaffold, on his back, and hit his head on the sidewalk."

"Paralysis?"

"Amazingly, no. Well, not so far," he amended himself. "He broke his back. His spinal CT was clear, and we relieved the pressure on his brain, but he's in a coma. We'll see how he does. Your craniotomy from today is healing nicely though."

"Good," she murmured. "That's good."

"Are you mad at me?" he asked, whispering the words right into her skin. "For not being able to get her today?"

"No. It's not your fault everyone in Seattle decided to bash their brains in today."

"What's wrong then?"

"Nothing's wrong," she shook her head.

"Your heart is beating so fast," he observed, laying his palm flat across her chest.

"I think you're just trying to feel me up."

"I married you so I wouldn't have to be stealth about it. I can do that whenever I want," he chuckled. "Seriously, Mer…."

"Seriously, nothing's wrong," she promised, drawing his hands up around her and clasping them in her own.

Curling into her, he settled in. He burrowed his head into his pillow and took a deep breath. The full extent of his fatigue settled deep into his bones, and he wrapped himself around Meredith a little tighter as sleep started to come over him. Just as he got to the woozy limbo between consciousness and unconsciousness, Meredith squeezed his hand.

"Hey," she whispered. She paused, and he squeezed back. "I'm pregnant."

"What?" he asked in euphoric disbelief. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," she said quietly. "It's a lot. I know it's a lot."

"It's good, Mer." He rubbed his foot up and down her leg for a minute, and tenderly kissed the back of her neck. "This is so good."

Good things, she thought. So many good things had happened.

Emily. Warm and pink in the hospital, holding her hand. Swaddled and snuggled between her and Derek in bed. In the park, on the fourth of July, with strawberry juice dribbling down her mouth and fireworks in the sky. Caught red-handed with Cristina, of all people, playing hide and seek. Sitting on the kitchen counter helping Izzie bake muffins, laughing as she tried to spoon batter into the cups with her hands. Running towards her, with sticky hands and a delighted shriek, for a bear hug when she got home from work. Feeling like she belonged to someone.

The memories wrapped around her, more comforting than anything else she could think of at that moment. "Yeah," she said into the darkness. "It is good, isn't it?"

* * *

"And, Dr. Bowman, why am I removing only the majority of the tumor today?" Meredith quizzed in the middle of a surgery a few weeks later.

"The tumor is on the occipital lobe, which is the part of the brain that controls vision. The patient has asked us to proceed with cutting as much of it out as we can without doing damage to the brain, in an attempt to save his sight."

Meredith nodded. "And what is the post-op treatment protocol for Mr. Rhodes?"

"We'll proceed with radiation and chemotherapy to kill any cancer cells that might remain."

"Correct," she managed, taking a deep breath as she turned away from her patient. The nausea had arrived about two weeks after she found out she was pregnant, and it had been almost a constant ever since. She had been a fixture in the operating room for four years, and it had never bothered her until now, but that initial incision and the subsequent smell of an open body on her table made her stomach churn every time.

A few hours later, after she closed the incision and scrubbed out, all the while managing not to throw up, Meredith retreated to the bathroom. She turned one of the sinks on and doused her wrists under the stream of cold water, then pressed her moist hands on the back of her neck. A wave of nausea washed over her, and her stomach felt like it had been turned upside down. Hunching over, she gagged once over the sink, but swallowed it back. She took a shaky breath, and looked up into the mirror. The mythical glowing pregnancy skin was nowhere to be found. Instead, her complexion was pale and clammy. Maybe it was just the fatigue, or maybe the hormones. Maybe a little of both. She dragged her fingertips over her cheekbones and temples, and tried to massage some of the tension away.

Sighing, she glanced away for a second, just to check her pager. Almost eleven in the morning. Maybe she'd squeeze in visiting Emily before lunch. Maybe Derek too. It was exhausting trying to be everything.

She touched her stomach, tight and slightly distended even in the early weeks of pregnancy. Her insides, on the other hand, felt like a bowl of jello. The red kind. With that cherry cough syrup smell. Chunky. With a thin, firm skin on top. A spoon could slice right through it, just like a scalpel on flesh.

Meredith gagged again, and this time, she couldn't keep it down. In an instant, she turned around and pushed the door to one of the stalls back open, vomiting harshly into the toilet. When she thought it was over, the mere recollection of the smell of iodine mixing with blood, and the image of the somewhat gelatinous look of the human brain, squeezed hard once more around her queasy stomach. She barely had time to recover before she was emptying the rest of her breakfast into the toilet.

Groaning miserably, she leaned back against the bathroom stall and wiped her mouth with the skin of her wrist. Only a few more weeks, she thought. A few more weeks and this would ease up considerably, just like it had with Emily. A few more weeks and Emily's two year molars would finally be in. They'd be able to get her back into her own bed. They'd be able to get a full night's sleep. The surgeries, though - they were always going to keep coming. Another this afternoon, in fact. One more tomorrow, and two the next day. So far, barring any traumas. Please, please, no one fall off a building or crash their car into a telephone pole or get shot in the head, at least until next week, she pleaded tiredly to no one in particular. Just until next week, or even until this nausea let up a bit.

You can do this, she told herself. You are Meredith. At least I think you are.

A little privacy would have been nice, but she couldn't expect much when she was holed up in a pubic restroom in a highly busy area of a hospital. She looked under the door to see a pair of black Crocs, partially hidden by powder blue scrubs, inspect every stall like it was a police investigation.

"Meredith," Cristina called, pushing door after door open before finally getting to the one where she actually was. "Mer -" she stopped abruptly when she almost hit Meredith in the head with the door. "Hey." She sank down to the floor next to Meredith. "Smells great in here."

"I just puked twice."

"You should go home."

"What? No, don't be ridiculous. I'm fine. I have a surgery this afternoon."

"Yeah, well, Bowman is running his mouth, saying that you looked like you were going to blow chunks all over the OR just now."

"Oh, God, can we not talk about chunks?" she moaned, rolling her head back and pressing her palms flat against the floor. "I'm fine," she insisted again.

"Has your OB at least given you a Zofran prescription?" Cristina asked.

"I don't need it." She inhaled slowly with every word, almost choking on the last one.

"Fine, you don't need it."

"It stopped working for me," she admitted reluctantly after a moment or two.

"Then I'll write you a prescription for Phenergan right now," Cristina offered.

"No," she swallowed hard. "Phenergan makes me too tired. I have to be able to sleep when I'm on Phenergan."

"You should be sleeping right now," Cristina countered. "I looked at the board. Your surgery started at six."

"I am fine," Meredith repeated through gritted teeth. She needed to touch something cold, anything to help with the annoying, nauseating heat that flushed her face and glazed her over with sweat almost instantly. Lying down on the tile floor with both hands flat, she bunched her scrub top up under her breasts in an attempt to cool the small of her back, and she suddenly felt a little better.

"You are lying on the floor of a public bathroom, and you are so nauseous that you don't even care that it's disgusting. Mer, you should go home and rest. Zeller can take care of that surgery this afternoon."

"You just don't want me to stay because you want to be chief resident and so do I and you just don't want me to do this surgery," she rambled, pressing both hands on her forehead. "You just want me to get a mini van and stay with my kids and not be a doctor anymore."

"Ok, I know you're hormonal and sick, despite you being fine and everything, but seriously. You need to need to take care of yourself. Mer…."

"I know," she moaned, bursting into tears. "I know. I'm sorry. I just," she gasped, and tried to get up. Cristina immediately grabbed her arm, holding her up and over the toilet, and Meredith dry-heaved violently, her stomach cramping with every woozy, churning flip flop. Tears rolled down her cheeks, carving wet rivulets in her skin as the color further drained from her face.

"Do you want some water?" Cristina asked as she helped her sit up.

Meredith shook her head and blotted at the tears with her fingertips. She cupped her forehead in her hands, caught between not wanting to cry too hard for fear of upsetting her stomach even more, and feeling like she simply couldn't keep everything in.

It was impossible. Impossible to be everything, and do everything, and have everything. At least not right now, or the way she had hoped. Here she was with a husband who adored her, a beautiful baby, and another healthy one on the way. She had the career, the drive, and the ambition, and had been working on the clout and the prestige since the day she set foot in that hospital. She had everything that the majority of the world said that they wanted, even if only in an abstract someday. But if they could see her now. A sobbing, puking, hormonal mess sitting on the floor of a public restroom. It didn't feel so great.

She wanted everything that she had, very much so in fact. But the key, she realized, was wanting each component of her life enough to make it real. And right now, she didn't want to be a surgeon. She wanted to take Emily home for the day, and Derek too, even if he was in the middle of surgery, and go home. She wanted to take Emily's afternoon nap with her on the couch. She wanted Derek to run her a warm bath, and then join her. Doctors didn't get sick, or pregnant. And when they did, they at least had the good professional sense to do it quietly and discreetly. No allowances, no exceptions. Certainly no special treatment.

But somewhere, she knew she wanted to do that surgery this afternoon too. Because she also knew that when she was done with the throwing up and the exhaustion that ached deep in her bones, she wanted to be chief resident too.

The anti-Ellis.

The one who could balance and juggle and love and mother and cut, equally, all at the same time. The one who could have the stellar career, and later grow wrinkly and old with her first real love.

The one who could raise a daughter to be the anti-Meredith.

She didn't realize how hard she was crying, but Cristina brought her back to the present when she flushed the toilet, and then briefly touched her shoulder. "Mer," she offered quietly. "I'm going to go get Derek, ok?"

Cristina left her there, and a few minutes later, Meredith could hear the door open again. She straightened up a bit, took a few deep breaths, and blotted a few lingering tears with her fingertips.

"Fifth stall," she heard Cristina instruct, and Derek breezed immediately in. "Where are you going?" Meredith heard her ask accusingly, directing her attention to someone else.

"The bathroom," a nurse she thought was named Lisa replied.

"Yeah, not today," and the door pulled closed. She continued to hear disgruntled, muffled arguing from the other side of the door, but Cristina refused to budge. She thought she heard a snide comment about bedpans, but she couldn't be sure.

"Meredith," Derek called as he carefully opened the door to her stall and sat down next to her. "Hey."

"Hey."

"What's going on?" he asked softly, brushing his lips against her forehead. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," she wavered. "I just want you to go get the baby and I want to sleep. I want to stop being sick, and I can't. I can't, Derek," she spilled out as her voice broke.

"Ok," Derek soothed, wrapping his arm around her. She gripped at the hard muscles of his abdomen and rested her head on his shoulder. "Do you want me to do that surgery this afternoon?" he asked. "I have time. You can take Em home, and I'll come home as soon as I'm done?"

"No," she moaned. "I just want you…. Everybody looks at me differently."

"No, they don't," he tried to assure her.

"I'm laying here crying and throwing up on the floor of a public bathroom, and my best friend is guarding the door so my husband can come in and I can fall apart in peace. Everyone is looking at me. Even you are."

"No, Meredith."

"Fat, pregnant, hysterical Meredith. Crazy hormone lady with the perfect life who can't stop crying…. I can't handle this," she admitted, shame wrapping itself around her throat like a noose. "This isn't what you signed up for when you married me."

"This is exactly what I signed up for," he murmured. "Me holding you when you cry. You pregnant with my child. This," he paused as he kissed her temple, "Is exactly what I signed up for when I married you."

"It's not going to get better," she said desperately. "I can't be everything."

"You're doing it, Mer. You're already doing everything." She held onto him, and he rubbed her back in the same way he rubbed Emily's – slow, gentle, clockwise circles.

Looking up at him, she asked suddenly, "Am I like her?"

"Who?"

"My mother."

"No," he replied immediately, searching his brain for the best choice of words that would prove to her how honestly he felt that way. Because she wasn't like Ellis. The one who wasn't there for Meredith because she was too busy being a shark in the OR. The one who Meredith spent her entire life never really knowing. The one who never just let Meredith feel like she measured up. "You're not like her. You are…. Meredith, you are nothing like her," he swore.

"I hope I'm not," she choked as he told her to breathe. "I don't want Emily to be like me."

"Hey," Derek said sharply. He helped her sit up a little more, supporting almost her entire weight with one arm. "There is nothing wrong with being you. Look at me. It's going to get better," he comforted. "You're right, maybe it will be hard for a little while. But everything works out in the end, doesn't it?"

"That's what I'm banking on."

"You can do this," he promised with each word. "You're Meredith."

Meredith clutched at his hand – I think I can. I think I am. - and he squeezed back reassuringly.


	6. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now

" _If you have tears, prepare to shed them now." – William Shakespeare_

* * *

At first, she thought it was ligament pain, just the sharp ache of an expanding uterus pushing on strained tissue. She'd been in surgery when it started, just a phantom of discomfort at first, but it soon had bloomed into something else entirely. A crampy, gnawing, emptying pain that dizzied her and plunged her into a deep denial.

She continued to cut, and cauterize tiny blood vessels around the spine, with one of her interns peering over her shoulder in rapt attention. Pausing for a moment, she took notice of the surgical team around her – the anesthesiologist, the scrub nurses, the people who were looking to her to lead this surgery – and gritted her teeth. She hadn't had much, if anything, to do with obstetrics since she was an intern, but quickly, she tried to mentally rattle off the causes of abdominal pain during pregnancy. Round ligament pain, heartburn, constipation, gas. Miscarriage. The chance of which went down significantly after the twelve-week mark. Ten and a half weeks was close enough, right?

Everyone knew she was pregnant. In a hospital like this one, where gossip moved like an ocean current through the hallways, there's no way everyone could not know, though few had congratulated her or Derek outright. There had been no official announcement, but the day Cristina Yang had to guard the door to the women's bathroom so Derek Shepherd could comfort his wife in semi-privacy, everyone had gotten a pretty good idea of what was going on.

Pregnant or not, though, Meredith had insisted on professionalism. Normalcy. Good medicine. She could continue to power through 12-hour work days, and stay on call every fourth night, in the following weeks. She had made peace with admitting, if only to herself, that she wasn't feeling completely normal, but she still had to cringe whenever she slid her scalpel over human flesh for the first time, partly from nausea and partly from the way everyone looked at her when she did it.

By the time the bleeding started, she was already at home, cooking dinner. Spaghetti, which was one of the first meals she had learned how to make without irreparably screwing it up. Put two saucepans on the stove. Boil the pasta, heat the sauce. It was also Emily's favorite. Meredith always thought that she liked to play with the noodles more than she liked eating them, but what Emily wanted, she would give it to her. It was slow at first, but when she felt wet, while she was stirring the spaghetti sauce with a wooden spoon, she knew that she'd look back on that instant as the beginning of the end.

She moved somewhat robotically from that point on. The pain in her abdomen had gone on too long, and had spiraled into something too terrifying for it to be nothing. The cramping had changed from something she could have honestly mistaken for round ligament pain to something that rushed memories of early labor with Emily back to her. The bleeding could have been normal spotting, if it hadn't kept going. There was nothing she could do, and she felt it everywhere. Not just in the nerve endings of a failing uterus, but also deep in her chest, and suddenly she knew that this is how it felt when your heart was breaking.

The meal wasn't finished cooking, but Meredith turned off the stove and simply left it there, half-cooked pasta still hard in lukewarm water. Instead, she microwaved a bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese, and set it on Emily's highchair. When she called her daughter in to the kitchen, the voice that left her lips didn't even sound like her own. It sounded more distant, tighter, like she was treading water and these were the last words she would say before her arms and legs became too tired to keep her afloat anymore.

Emily ran in, her loose caramel-colored curls bouncing wild around her face. She could run. She was running now. Her jeans were still too long, covering the tops of her sneakers, but she had the ability to run. At least she was running to someone instead of always away, away, away. Meredith gathered her up in her arms, and slid her into her chair. She swallowed hard, and planted a half-hearted smile firmly on her face. Normal. Please be normal. Emily deserves normal.

"Hungry, Em?" Meredith asked, with a false cheerfulness that she hoped Emily, at nearly two years old, couldn't see through.

"Where my sketti?" Emily asked disappointedly, looking down at her macaroni and cheese and back up at Meredith.

"We didn't have any," she lied, apologizing with every word. "I'll go to the store tomorrow and get you some more, okay?"

"Ok," Emily agreed, poking at her dinner tentatively with one finger. For the past several weeks, she had insisted on feeding herself, but she made no move to pick up the small pink rubber-coated spoon Meredith left on the tray for her. Instead, Meredith picked it up in an attempt to get Emily started.

"No," she said simply, in the defiant tone only a toddler could muster, and pushed the bowl away from her.

"It's yummy," Meredith assured her, but Emily whined and batted at Meredith's hand, trying to knock the spoon away.

"I want sketti."

"I'm sorry, we don't have it, Em."

"When my Daddy come back?" she asked. The irritation in her voice threw it into something high-pitched and on the verge of a tantrum.

"Soon," Meredith promised. She felt herself caught between a strange limbo of wanting her husband home as fast as the engine of his car could carry him and wanting him to stay away. The longer he stayed away, the longer this wouldn't be happening to him. Maybe the longer he didn't know that it was almost over, the less Derek knew it was real, the less it would have to be real at all.

"Airplane?" she offered, scooping some noodles onto the spoon and spiraling it towards Emily's tightly closed lips. Emily shook her head back and forth, vehemently refusing to open her mouth for something she didn't want.

"Sketti," she insisted.

"There isn't any, but try this macaroni and cheese," Meredith pleaded. "It's good," she told Emily, taking a bite of it herself. As soon as the food touched her lips, she immediately wished it hadn't. One bite turned an already jumpy stomach into a nauseous, twisting mess. She inhaled deeply through her nostrils, and mimicked Emily, keeping her mouth tightly closed. She let a few seconds pass, and when she had calmed a bit, she opened her mouth again. "How about if I let you watch a movie?"

Emily nodded, taking the bribe. Meredith moved Emily out of her chair and into the living room. She brought the bowl of macaroni and cheese in with her, and popped in the Cinderella DVD Emily had been obsessed with for weeks. As the animated princess danced across the screen with her mouse friends, Emily watched in awe, and Meredith used that opportunity to spoon her dinner into her mouth while she wasn't paying attention. Emily chewed distractedly, clapping as the mice successfully escaped the menacing housecat once again. Meredith shoveled the last bite in as Emily pointed happily at the screen as Cinderella was transformed into a beautiful princess just in time for the ball, blissfully unaware that her problems had just begun.

Leaving the bowl on the coffee table, Meredith got up from the couch. She kissed the top of Emily's head and whispered how much she loved her, smoothing down her hair. Then she went upstairs.

In the bathroom, she pressed a pad into a new pair of panties. Changing into sweatpants and a t-shirt, she left the jeans and button-down she was wearing in a pile on the floor. She realized somewhat that these clothes would have to be thrown out; she'd never want to wear them again. It was over. And now all she had to do was wait.

Her bed didn't feel as comfortable as it usually did, but she lay down anyway. As the reality of the situation snuck up on her like a vicious predator, she felt so empty, and at the same time, so full, that it was almost unbearable. She tried to will herself to cry, to let some of it out, but she couldn't make the tears come.

She felt like she was holding that bomb again, like at any second it could explode in her hands and destroy her, taking with it as it detonated all the happy memories she had worked so hard to find and keep. She hadn't had that feeling this time, the feeling of sure and imminent destruction, but maybe it was better to be caught off guard with something like this. The waiting to be gone was tough enough. Trying to remember what that all felt like, how it felt to know that something catastrophic simply had to happen before there was any type of relief, she pressed her fingertips to her cramping stomach. She wasn't holding the bomb anymore. She was the bomb, and every cramp, every slow trickle of blood, was bringing her one step closer to the unavoidable tragedy.

* * *

When Derek got home from work at about seven o'clock, he knew immediately that something was not right. He came in through the kitchen door, expecting to find a plate of pasta covered in plastic wrap on the table for him, but instead he found a pot of spaghetti, barely cooked, sitting in cold water on the stove. Though Meredith's car was in the driveway, the table hadn't been set, and there were no dirty dishes in the sink or dishwasher.

Quickly, he went to the living room, where he found his daughter safely curled up on the couch, drinking a sippy cup of apple juice and watching a movie. An empty bowl that looked like it used to contain macaroni and cheese sat on the coffee table. He glanced around the room for Meredith, but he didn't see her, and the house was quiet except for the cheerful movie dialogue.

"Hi, Bean," Derek smiled as calmly as he could, dropping his briefcase and scooping Emily up.

"Hi, Daddy," Emily said happily, giggling as Derek kissed her hello. "That Cindewella," she pointed at the television, nodding along to herself.

"Yes, it is," he agreed. "Em, where's Mommy?"

Emily pointed to the stairs. "Her go up there."

"Meredith," he called, figuring she had just gone to the bathroom or to change her clothes. "Mer," he tried again when she didn't answer or come downstairs.

He let a few seconds pass before gently setting Emily back down on the couch and heading for the stairs himself.

"You go up there too?" Emily asked.

"I'm going to find Mommy," he said. "I'll be back. You watch your movie, ok, Bean?"

Taking the steps two at a time, he looked in every door along the hallway like he was playing a game of hide and seek and failing miserably at it. He poked his head in room after room, Emily's first, then the spare room which they were going to start turning into the baby's room soon, and finally the bathroom. He saw the pile of clothes on the floor and fear rose in his throat, tasting remarkably like bile. He could barely feel his legs as he opened the last door on the left side of the hallway, the door to the bedroom he shared with Meredith.

She was curled up in bed, her back facing him, not moving at all. He had to admit that, although slightly irrational, he felt somewhat relieved when he watched her chest rise and fall a few times. He didn't really think she had died, but it was good to see that she was still breathing nonetheless. Going around to the other side of the room, he bent down to look into her eyes, and what he saw scared him to his very core.

Her eyes looked so tired, glazed over with tears as she stared right past him and at the wall. She had the covers drawn up around her waist, and she gripped them so tightly that her knuckles whitened. She looked pale. Drained. Completely.

He had to say her name a few times to get her to focus on him, said it like he was trying to rouse a patient after surgery when the anesthesia was still wearing off.

"Meredith," he urged quietly, but she didn't move. "Mer," he tried once more, the palm of his hand on her arm and then on her face.

"I hear you," she said, her eyes meeting his for a moment. Her voice came out soft and strained, like she hadn't spoken in several days, or like the tube that had kept her ventilated during a long surgery had just been taken out.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Are you sick?" She shook her head just barely, and her focus went back to the wall behind him. "What's wrong?" he asked again, and though she didn't move or speak, the tears rolling down her face were indication enough.

He kicked off his shoes and moved to the other side of the bed. Sometimes all she needed was to be held lately, comforted in just the right way. He knew that as much as he swore to her that everything would be ok, just like it had been with Emily, she still had her doubts. It was like she couldn't believe that she, Meredith Grey, deserved to lead such a charmed life, and that it was simply a matter of time before it unraveled. She kept telling him that it was impossible to be everything, and it seemed like she was constantly worrying about Emily and how her every action was affecting her daughter. She had doubts. And Derek was ok with that. For the past several weeks, he had been helping her work through them as much as he could, but there were still days like today, when it all fell apart in her mind.

When he pulled back the covers to get in bed with her though, his stomach lurched violently forward. The stark crimson of the blood on the white sheets wasn't a lot, but it was enough, and it sent him reeling into an instantaneous grief of his own. As tears pricked the backs of his eyes, he fought the urge to vomit out of sheer helplessness.

"Oh my God," he breathed with a wavering voice. "We have to go to the hospital." The decision in his mind was immediate, not optional in the slightest. Some vaginal bleeding during early pregnancy was normal. He did know that. Granted he hadn't been involved in obstetrics since he was an intern, but he had retained some information from Addison over the years. He had convinced himself in that moment that this could still turn out to be normal, if they got up and went now. "Meredith, we have to go."

"No," she murmured steadily. "I can't."

"You're bleeding. We're going to lose the baby if we don't go."

"I lost the baby, Derek," Meredith said, sad yet certain in the way that she spoke.

"You don't know that," he said desperately.

"I wish I didn't."

"We have to go," he said firmly, but he was met with resistance again.

"I can do this at home. We can do this at home," she corrected herself. Her voice was thick with emotion, like someone had coated the inside of her throat with peanut butter and refused to give her something to wash it down with. "I can't be a patient and do this in a hospital."

"Meredith," he pleaded, but she stopped him abruptly.

"I'm not going, Derek."

He left the room then, only because he didn't know what else to do. She was a doctor too, and there would be no forcing Meredith Grey to do anything. He walked back and forth down the hallway, at a loss for what the appropriate course of action would now be. He couldn't lie there with her and watch it happen, but he couldn't make himself go back downstairs to his daughter and trust himself not to break down in front of her.

He sank down on the bathroom floor, pulling at the tie around his neck that felt suddenly more like a chokehold than a piece of formal attire. Through the open door, he could hear Emily's attempts to sing along with the DVD downstairs, though her words were somewhat jumbled like she was having trouble keeping up with the perky blonde princess on the screen. He didn't hear anything coming from Meredith's room, though he didn't expect to, and he made a note to check on her as soon as he could get himself together.

Taking a deep, gasping breath, he pushed his hair back and clenched his fists. It seemed remarkably unnerving that he was sitting on the floor of his bathroom, choking back tears, rather than doing something. He found himself torn between Meredith's quiet, sure devastation and the lingering thought that was already starting to burn him like a match that this could all be stopped.

The bottom line was that Derek Shepherd trusted medicine. He had devoted his life to the belief that letting nature take its course was one of the least desirable options when faced with something dire. When it came to his patients, Derek Shepherd rarely decided against taking them into the operating room to do whatever he could for them. Caught off guard, thrown for a loop - it was ok, because he had been trained to be ready for these situations. To not trust in a doctor's capable hands was unnatural, and to not even give a doctor the chance to help was so maddeningly unheard of.

This could not be over. Just because Meredith had a feeling, just because Meredith knew somehow. He refused to believe it until he saw it for himself, until someone with an M.D. at the end of their name sat him down and made him believe it.

He was surprised at how weak his legs felt when he stood up, like they weren't even attached to his body. He floated down the hallway and into the fourth bedroom, which had become a catch-all room over the past few years, and pried open the cardboard flaps of a box full of textbooks. Meredith was a packrat, unable to throw things away, and though Derek found the resulting clutter irritating and cumbersome, he was thankful now that she hadn't thrown away all her medical school textbooks. He started looking for obstetrics. Anything on obstetrics.

When all he found were organic chemistry, cell biology, anatomy, and pharmacology textbooks, stacked high in the box, he had to settle for _What to Expect When You're Expecting_ , which he saw resting on top of another box elsewhere in the room. It was an admitted gag gift from Cristina, given to Meredith when she was pregnant with Emily, but Derek found himself flying through the pages as if it were published by the surgeon general, searching for anything that would give him a sliver of hope to hang on to.

This book for the everywoman wasn't helping him. Blanketed, comforting, and vague, it wasn't telling him the medical facts that he needed to know. Everything here could be a problem, or it could not be. Possible causes were listed in bullet points. Rather than define itself as a source of perfect advice, it referred its readers to their doctors for definite answers. The one thing Meredith refused to do.

He heard the door open down the hall, and heavy footsteps close the door to the bathroom, but he remained on the floor in a daze. His sorrow suffocated him and his sheer inability to do anything to remedy the situation was unbearable. He was never very good at being helpless; whenever possible, he preferred to act, to have some hand in what happened in his life. Now, he felt like even that was being taken away from him.

A small yelp came from behind the bathroom door and immediately, Derek was on his feet, running. Opening the door without a second thought, his heart nearly beat right out of his chest. A gush of blood, and Meredith in tears, launched Derek past grief-stricken and headfirst into paralyzing fear.

It was too much blood. Much too much.

She sat there, shaking and tearful with her hands gripping her thighs. Hiccupping, choking back sobs, Meredith looked up at him with the same fear he felt in deep in his gut. He cursed himself for waiting this long, for letting her be because that's what she wanted. "We're going to the hospital."

"No," she whimpered. "It's almost over."

"We're going."

"No," she repeated. Her voice was firm, but verging on hysterical. "Don't you think I'm talked about enough?"

Deep down, he knew she was grieving just as much as he was. Deep down, he understood that she was reeling. But his blood boiled as those words left her lips. "I don't care. I'm getting you some new clothes and we're going right now."

She shook her head vehemently back and forth, and made no move to get up and do what he asked. "No," she breathed. "No, no, no," she repeated until it barely sounded like a word anymore, just a ping pong of desperate sound.

"Get your clothes on," he said, his teeth clenching as his eyes bored into her. "I'm bringing some clothes in here, and I'm calling Izzie to get the baby, and we're going. We shouldn't have let it go this long," he whispered as his voice broke. "We just shouldn't have." Before Meredith could get a halfhearted, weary protest out of her mouth again, Derek silenced her. "We're going even if I have to call 911 to take you in an ambulance."

"Not Seattle Grace," she pleaded, finally surrendering. "Mercy West. Please, Derek."

Derek barely knew what he was doing as he rifled through her drawers and left her a clean pair of pants in the bathroom for her. Later, he would feel pangs of remorse for taking such a harsh tone with her, and he did vaguely remember whispering some words of reassurance and apology to her in the car on the way to the hospital as she gripped his hand, but in that moment, he was frantic. The flitty trills of the movie's score were still playing downstairs, and somewhere in his mind, he knew he could count on Emily to still be completely enthralled with the movie. In the bedroom, he fumbled for the phone and dialed a number he barely knew but adrenaline allowed him to remember.

When Izzie answered, it was all Derek could do to keep it together long enough to ask her what he needed from her.

"Izzie, its Derek."

"Oh, hi, what's up?" her cheerful voice came across the telephone line.

"Can you watch the baby for a couple hours?"

"Yeah, of course!" Izzie exclaimed, eager at a chance to play with Emily for even a little while. "When? Do you and Meredith want to go to dinner sometime this week? That's so great that it seems like she's starting to feel better. Like really great. I've been leaving the hospital around 7:30 every night, but I can leave early one night if you guys want. I'm sure Alex won't mind. When?" she asked again.

"We actually need you right now," Derek said, taking a wavering breath that he hoped she couldn't hear on the other end of the line.

"I guess I could come now. Is everything ok?"

"Meredith's losing the baby," he spilled out, gasping for another breath and squeezing his eyes closed.

"Oh my God," Izzie said, shocked and heartbroken. "I'll be right there."

Twenty minutes later, an urgent knock came at the front door. Derek and Meredith had moved downstairs, and all three of them lay on the couch together. Derek's left arm wrapped around Emily, his palm smoothing her hair down over and over as they watched "Cinderella" over again from the beginning. The two of them were scrunched up at one end of the couch, and Meredith lay down, sprawled over the rest of it with her head on Derek's lap. Derek's right hand lay across Meredith's abdomen, sometimes rubbing back and forth and sometimes lying still.

When Izzie knocked, Meredith tiredly lifted her head so Derek could get up and answer the door, and he gathered Emily up into his arms and carried her with him. He opened the door, and found Izzie standing there, her eyes glazed over with tears. She had a small bag slung over her shoulder, and as soon as she stepped inside, she immediately gave Derek a comforting hug.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, taking Emily from his arms. "Go; we'll be fine. Right, Em?" she smiled at the toddler. "I have some stuff to stay overnight if you need me to. Don't worry about us."

"Thanks," Derek mustered, already exhausted though the ordeal had just begun. He moved back into the living room, and helped Meredith up. A little light-headed, she gripped his waist for support and looked blankly at Izzie.

"Meredith," Izzie murmured, feeling the profound loss in her heart as well as she hugged her friend. "I'm here, ok?" Meredith nodded weakly as Derek ushered her out the door.

* * *

Derek took her to Mercy West. By the time he had found her in the bathroom, he didn't care who saw her, just as long as someone did. The only time she'd ever been a patient in the ER before, she had been unconscious. Now, as they moved her ahead of the stomach flu patients and those with minor cuts in need of stitches, she felt strangely thankful that she was considered either critical or prestigious enough to move to the front of the line.

The nurse and Derek helped her change into a gown behind the closed curtains of one of their exam rooms, and got her to lie down while she took her history. Inside, Meredith was screaming to just get on with it. She was a doctor. She knew the routine, and she didn't want any of it.

Derek held her hand while they waited for someone from OB to come down and examine her. When the nurse left to page someone, she heard Derek pull her aside and tell her that he was the head of neurosurgery at Seattle Grace and his wife was a surgical resident. He told her that he wanted an attending, and he wanted one quickly. Normally, she would have scolded him for acting so rude; he knew as well as she did that the doctors here weren't just having tea and cookies upstairs right now. There were other people here. She was too weary to make the words leave her lips though, and if she was being honest with herself, she would prefer an attending too if she had to be here at all.

Soon after Derek made his request, a short, stocky woman slid the curtain back and slipped inside with them.

"Hi, I'm Dr. D'Amico," the woman smiled as gently as she could. With her chocolate mousse hair slicked back into a ponytail and warm brown eyes, she had a comforting demeanor about her. "Dr. Grey, my nurse tells me that you're experiencing some vaginal bleeding and abdominal pain, and you're ten weeks pregnant. Is that correct?"

"Almost eleven," Derek interjected hurriedly.

"Yeah," Meredith breathed. "Almost eleven."

"Ok," Dr. D'Amico said comfortingly. "Let's do a pelvic and an ultrasound to see what's going on here."

Distantly, Meredith felt Derek and the doctor ease her legs up and open. She had the vague sensation that the doctor's fingers were between her legs, but though she knew she was being examined, she could barely feel anything. Looking around, the medical instruments she had been surrounded by for all of her professional life were strangely daunting, and she felt like the patients in other sectioned-off portions of the ER were right on top of her. Derek pushed her gown up over her abdomen, and when she felt the doctor squirt some gel onto her skin, she forced herself to dissociate as much as possible from her body.

She tried to force her mind to go elsewhere, to think of all that she still had rather than what she was in the middle of so painfully losing, but all she could think about was her doctor's appointment the week before. How hadn't this been caught? How had she gone on for almost eleven weeks with no indication that something like this would happen? How had she, a doctor, a freakin' brain surgeon no less, not seen this coming? A week ago, everything had been fine. A week ago, the doctor was pleased to inform her that, so far, it was a textbook pregnancy. She remembered exactly how it felt when he said that. Derek was sitting next to her, holding her hand, as the ultrasound doppler smeared cool gel over her stomach and picked up the rapid, thundering sound of a heartbeat. It was so fast, and she remembered the feel of Derek's facial hair scraping against her neck as he whispered against her skin that he thought maybe it would be another girl. The heartbeat was 156. Maybe he was right. Now, she was almost certain that she didn't want to know.

"I'm sorry." No two words dragged her back to the present like the ones that so reluctantly left the doctor's lips in the following seconds. She knew the tone, and had used it herself many times before. She hated it. But it was the softest, most comforting way to ease someone into unspeakable grief. "I can't find a heartbeat."

Meredith nodded, unable to speak for the tears cascading down her face. It was over. You can't be everything. You can't have everything.

"Look again," Derek pleaded gruffly. "It was there last week. Look again."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd," Dr. D'Amico said with genuine sympathy.

"Look again. It was there last week; look again."

"Dr. Shepherd, I've looked three times. I'm so sorry."

"I want to go," Meredith sobbed, sucking in breath after breath like she was trying not to drown. "I don't want to be here." Now that she had taken in the news she was dreading with every fiber of her being, she saw no reason to be here. She gripped Derek's hand for leverage, and tried to sit up. They had a baby at home. Emily. All she wanted right now was Emily.

"Ok," Derek swallowed. "Ok, ok, ok. We'll go, Mer."

"Dr. Grey," Dr. D'Amico pressed, stopping her in her tracks. "Dr. Grey, the amount of bleeding you're experiencing concerns me. You're presenting with an incomplete miscarriage. I think it's important that we do a D&C as soon as possible to resolve the issue. It's a procedure where we dilate your cervix and…."

"I know what it is," she snapped. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment before mumbling her consent.

"I'll bring the paperwork," Dr. D'Amico said sadly, and pulled the curtain closed behind her as she left.

While they waited for the doctor to get everything together, a nurse came and helped them move into an actual room. When Dr. D'Amico returned a little while later, Meredith scribbled her name quickly, and pushed the clipboard away like she had just signed a contract with the devil. Again, she remotely felt Derek and the doctor ease her legs up and into some stirrups, and bunch her gown around her waist. Her head lolled to the side as her eyes filled with tears for what seemed like the millionth time that day, and suddenly, she felt very, very tired. She heard Derek sit down beside her, and felt his face burrow into the pillow above her head. So he couldn't watch either. His hand reached for hers, and when she squeezed weakly back, she felt his heartbroken, choking sobs in her very center.

Regret, pain, desperation, and a hard stone of grief forged together in an impossible clot in her heart. The doctor administered the local anesthetic as gently as she could. When she felt the sharp metal tugging inside her, she hated that she knew that no drug in this hospital could make her numb enough for this to be bearable.


	7. Quiet landslide and nobody knows

_Quiet landslide and nobody knows  
_ _Regretted decisions that nobody chose  
_ _Under water, sinking fast  
_ _No way out, no way to get back  
_ _What might have been is lost in the past_

* * *

The whole procedure had taken less than an hour. Meredith stared up at the ceiling, unflinching, throughout the entire thing, and didn't look at Derek, who had slumped back in his chair and cried quietly with his head in his hands.

"Dr. Grey, I'm all finished here," Dr. D'Amico said gently, straightening up from between Meredith's legs.

Meredith nodded weakly, her eyes slipping closed.

"I'd like to admit you overnight, just for observation. As I'm sure you know, a miscarriage can trigger a lot of bleeding, and in your case, it was particularly extensive. The D&C should take care of most of it, but bleeding can continue for several days afterwards and I'd like to watch you to be sure that the situation will resolve itself without any further intervention."

Derek stared at the doctor, his eyes exhausted and tear-stained, and bored into her. She glanced over at him, like she felt his eyes on her, and smiled comfortingly, like she understood his fear. He routinely cut open people's brains for a living, and he was quite good at it. He did it with deft hands and the balls-to-the-wall kind of attitude that made him one of the most applauded surgeons on the West Coast. But despite all of that, he was completely out of his element here. It was his wife. His baby. He had just suffered a gut-wrenching loss. There was nothing he could do about it. All the medical knowledge in the world couldn't fix what had just happened. It was over.

"I can admit you, just until the morning," Dr. D'Amico offered again. "It would just be as a precaution, Dr. Grey. The procedure went absolutely fine."

Meredith shook her head no.

Derek transferred his stare to Meredith, prone on the table with her feet still in the stirrups and all the color gone from her face. He would have, in any other circumstances, disagreed with the doctor. He didn't know much about obstetrics and gynecology, but he knew that a D&C was a routine procedure. If he was going strictly by the books, a D&C was considered outpatient. The whole thing had taken less than an hour. Meredith should have been allowed to go home. The doctor shouldn't have even offered to admit her overnight, but she did. And he found himself going along with the doctor, simply because he couldn't be sure of the reason why she had suggested it in the first place. It was true that doctors could be counted on to bend the rules for their own when they needed it; there was that possibility that she had offered the room as a courtesy, a private place to grieve before they had to go home and face the rest of their lives. The rational part of him knew that in all likeliness, Dr. D'Amico was only trying to offer reassurance to a colleague in the only way she could. But he had left the rational part of himself in his second floor bathroom. It had thundered out like a tornado when he saw the blood, and felt fear boil inside him. He couldn't help but succumb to the other, more remote possibility – that Dr. D'Amico was legitimately concerned that there could be complications. And he had had enough of waiting it out until things got scary before he acted.

"Meredith, let's just stay the night and make sure everything is ok."

"No," she said, her strained voice coming out cracked and weak. "I'm going home."

"You're still bleeding," he pointed out stupidly.

"It should stop on it's own within a week or so," the doctor interjected. "Everything was evacuated, but the bleeding isn't something we can stop completely. Some bleeding is normal, and unavoidable."

"I know that. I'm not staying."

"Maybe we should. Mer, it's just one night."

"Derek, I am. Not. Staying," she said, her weak voice getting a little stronger, more defiant, for those words. "It's over. They got everything, ok? Emily's at home and that's where I should be."

Her words hitched up, coming out higher, faster, louder. She had the look of a caged animal on her face, being held against her will to be looked at, analyzed.

"Izzie said she could stay overnight," he said, swallowing back the lump in his throat. He closed his eyes for a second, and tried to squeeze out the frustration that had started to build in his head. "I'll call her. Em's fine. Mer…."

"I'm not staying. I'm not staying, Derek," she repeated frantically, gathering her strength to take her legs out of the stirrups and sit up a bit. "I'm not staying, I'm not staying."

"Just to make sure everything is ok!" he shouted, throwing himself back in his chair. Instantly, he regretted it. Meredith coiled into herself, and Dr. D'Amico shifted uncomfortably.

"I'm a doctor!" she yelled back. Her voice broke and she rambled on uncontrollably. "I know the risks. They're minimal and you know it. I did this for you, and now it's over and I am going home." She shifted her attention to the doctor, who looked like she was simply at a loss, and sank back into her chair. "I don't want any special treatment. I don't need to be admitted. You know that and I know that."

"Dr. Grey, it would only be…."

"No! I said I don't want it!"

"Meredith, would you just let her talk?" He couldn't explain where his fury was coming from. He knew that Meredith was just as devastated as he was, just as afraid. Probably more so. But he couldn't understand why Meredith didn't want to be in a hospital, why she was fighting so hard. But then that begged the question of why he was fighting so hard for the opposite of what she wanted. He looked at her, lying there with her legs dangling over the side of the table and tears spilling down her face, and he hated how vulnerable she looked.

"Let's go home, Mer," he sighed. "Let's just go."

"Ok," she whispered. She wiped her eyes, and covered her face with her hands for a moment.

"Ok," he said more definitively. "Thank you," he turned to shake the doctor's hand. He felt ridiculous as he did it, like it wasn't the right gesture at all, but he had never been on the bereaved family member end of this relationship dynamic and he wasn't sure how else to behave.

"I'll get your paperwork," Dr. D'Amico smiled sympathetically. It made Derek feel better that she didn't try to stop them. He felt more confident taking her home, and knew that if she really thought it wise that they stay, she would have spoken up.

Once the doctor had cleaned Meredith up and the appropriate paperwork was signed, Derek eased Meredith up and off the bed, and, while she gripped his waist for support, they walked out of the hospital.

He managed to hold it together on the way home, staring at the road halfheartedly. He found himself focusing on anything but what had just happened, where they had just come from. He glanced at the clock. 10:22. The silence was becoming unbearable. Neither of them had said a word since they left the hospital. He didn't think they had ever been silent around each other for this long.

"Music?" he suggested.

She shook her head and reached for his hand, drawing it away from the radio dial. She wrapped her fingers around his, but looked away, out the side window. He smoothed his thumb over the skin between her thumb and index finger, and squeezed gently, but her hand remained limp in his grasp. He couldn't think of a single thing to say. His own grief overpowered him, and though he wanted to say something, and even felt like he really _should_ be the one to speak first, he didn't have the energy or the heart to try in that moment. It was all he could do to keep his own head above water long enough to get them home.

They got back to their house at 10:38. By then, it had started to drizzle outside, and when Derek went around to the passenger side of the car, Meredith eased herself out into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest, silently, but he felt her tears on his shirt. Or maybe it was the rain. Kissing the top of her head, he breathed in the lingering scent of lavender. He pulled her closer and though neither of them spoke, he just held her there for a second.

Just for a moment, he convinced himself that this had all been a horrible, nauseating nightmare. They hadn't just been at the hospital. Their baby was still safely thriving inside Meredith. Nothing had changed. They had a date next week to pick out paint samples for the room next door to Emily's room, even though they were still deciding whether they wanted to know the baby's sex or not. They'd lay in bed tonight and trade ideas on how to tell her she was going to be a big sister. Nothing had changed. In that moment, everything was still so blissfully the same.

Meredith broke the embrace and walked with him tentatively towards the front door. That small gesture was enough to bring him back to the devastating reality that nothing was even remotely the same anymore. He felt so cheated, like it had ended before it really had a chance to begin. He'd seen couples come in for miscarriages before at the hospital, years ago, and he remembered feeling vaguely sad and sympathetic, but nothing could have prepared him for the aching sense of loss he felt now.

When he pushed the door open, Izzie sprung up from the couch. She looked at him expectantly, a little sleepy but still awake. He shook his head and Izzie's expression sank as he ushered Meredith inside. He had to hold on to her, like she wasn't even in control of her body anymore, while he helped her upstairs and into bed.

He didn't stay, and he said nothing. He simply shut the door and left her there. Though he felt some obligation to say things, do things – the right things – he had no idea where to begin, and the sick feeling in his stomach had been building for hours, becoming nearly impossible to resist now that he was home.

Back downstairs, Izzie was hastily trying to straighten up the living room, piling her things back into her bag.

"Do you need me to stay?" she asked, looking up at him when he stopped next to the sofa.

He shook his head. "It's ok."

"I'm sorry, Derek."

"Yeah," he breathed, sucking in a breath so hard in an attempt to disguise his wavering voice that it made him cough a little.

"Call me if you need anything."

She hugged him once more, and quickly let herself out. As soon as she was gone, he managed to make his way upstairs. Opening Emily's door briefly, he made sure she was safely asleep before he went to the bathroom.

He closed the door behind him, and sank down to the floor, his breathing becoming more ragged as soon as he realized that he was alone. Then, he couldn't stop the tears from coming. Big, angry, gulping sobs and tears that fell in droplets down his cheeks. He was an ugly crier. Over and over, the questions kept coming in his mind, storming through rapid-fire in a stampede of uncertainty. Where do we go from here? What do I say? When will this be over? But he always came back to the same thought – why, why, why?

Derek barely had time to react when he felt the bile rise in his throat, the culmination of the fear and the grief producing a real physical side effect. He retched into the toilet once, and then again mere seconds later, before he sank back against the cool porcelain of the tub, thoroughly exhausted.

Eventually, what could have been hours later for all he knew, he managed to catch his breath and stop crying long enough to entertain rational thought. He looked down and realized that he was still wearing the clothes he wore to work that morning. His dress pants and stark white shirt felt unbearably constricting, like they were somehow reminders of the life he was no longer living. They had to come off.

He picked himself up off the bathroom floor, and made himself walk to his bedroom. Meredith. He should check on Meredith. There could still be complications. Maybe she wanted something to eat or drink. He should do that for her. Stopping in front of the door, he hesitated, staring at the doorknob like when he opened it, he'd become a participant in a life that he didn't choose. Going in there would be conceding that, yes, this had happened.

But it _had_ happened. This had happened to them – to him, to her, to all three of them. He spent his entire professional life studying the facts, not the philosophical, and these were the facts: this had happened, it was over, and somehow, Meredith felt very far away from him. He had to get to her. Another fact. When he tried to turn the doorknob, it refused to budge. Meredith had locked him out.

* * *

A week later and Meredith found herself back at work, subjected to an altogether different kind of stare. Instead of the gleam of gossiping eyes at the nurses' station, she was on the receiving end of pitied sideways glances, the kind that quickly looked away when she dared to meet them.

She'd made it through eight hours of her first twelve-hour shift back, scrubbing in on an emergency aneurysm almost immediately after arriving. She had to admit it felt good to focus on something else besides the baby, to _have_ to focus on something else besides the baby, but the surgery had only taken a few hours. When it was over, she watched out of the corner of her eye as people literally slowed down when they walked by her as she finished her post-op notes. She could take it when nurse Olivia did it, expected it when nurse Debbie did the same thing, but when Cristina did it, something inside her snapped.

Grabbing Cristina by the arm, she pulled her into an empty on-call room. She noticed a bit of relief flit across Cristina's eyes as she caught a glimpse of the old headstrong Meredith just for an instant.

"What?" Meredith asked exasperatedly.

"What?" Cristina shrugged her shoulders.

"Why the hell are you looking at me like that?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You're looking at me just like everybody else is, and I don't want it. I expect it from everybody else here, but not you. You're looking at me like I'm going to fall apart any minute."

"Are you?" Cristina asked pointedly.

No. Yes. Maybe. At least she could appreciate the honesty of her asking. "I don't know."

"Ok."

Meredith leaned on the doorframe, her hand still on the knob, and eyed Cristina for a moment. She hadn't told her she'd lost the baby, at least not in those words. When neither she nor Derek showed up for work the day after the miscarriage, Cristina had called their house as soon as she had an available minute. All Meredith had been able to manage when Cristina asked why her ass wasn't at work that day was some incoherent sobbing about the baby, the baby. Immediately, Cristina knew that she didn't mean Emily, and had let Meredith cry on the phone for five minutes before she had to hang up to tend to an emergency page. In the following days, Meredith was grateful that Cristina had the prudence to get the details from Izzie rather than subject her to telling the whole story.

"You don't have to be back at work, you know."

"Yes, I do."

"Ok."

"What?" Meredith snapped defensively.

"Nothing," Cristina replied quickly. She looked like she was at a loss for what to do. Meredith couldn't blame her for it. What was the appropriate response for a loss of this magnitude? "How are you holding up?" she asked.

"I'm here," Meredith managed.

"Shepherd?"

Truth be told, she ha no idea how Derek was faring in all of this. Her mind was consumed with grief, and though she had tried to present normalcy for Emily, she was even failing miserably at that. She and Derek had barely talked since the night they came home from the hospital completely shattered, moving like zombies through the house. He'd gone back to work after two days; she'd taken a few days more. Ever since she'd locked the door, he'd stayed away.

"I don't know," she admitted, and took a slick breath.

Cristina nodded, and another moment of silence passed while she mulled over the small bits of information she had gotten from Meredith so far. Meredith regarded Cristina carefully, watched her look at her and then down at her hands.

"Meredith…. I'm sorry."

Meredith smiled weakly, but stared at the floor when she nodded. She fought the urge to grip her stomach, reminding herself that there was nothing there.

"Lunch later?"

"Ok," she agreed. She didn't flinch when Cristina reached out and touched her arm gently. Cristina didn't pretend to know. She didn't pretend to understand. She wouldn't stare again. But she would be there, as she always had been, not emotionally showy but behind Meredith in quiet solidarity.

"I'll page you in a couple hours?"

"Yeah," she replied quietly, and wiped at her eyes a little.

Meredith smoothed down her scrub top when Cristina took her hand away. She pushed down on the door handle, about to let herself out, when Cristina stopped her once more.

"Page me sooner if you need to."

* * *

Meredith had been going to bed almost as soon as she'd gotten Emily to sleep for the past three months. Ever since the miscarriage, if he wanted to pinpoint the exact day, which still felt so achingly sad to admit happened at all. Once her bleeding had stopped, at least on the outside, their lives got back to normal. They went to work, and spent every waking moment when they weren't at work with Emily. Life had slipped back into its old routines. For the most part.

He didn't think either of them were back to their old selves. Well, he knew he wasn't. And anybody who knew Meredith could tell with one look that she wasn't either. She'd fallen back into a shade of herself that he hadn't seen in years, but it was one that scared him to death. Every day, he briefly entertained the fear that he might find her submerged in the bathtub again, holding her own head under the water.

Even he felt remarkably empty for someone who looked like they had it all. He'd been published again last month, for a series of complex multi-stage operations on an epileptic man, and would be featured at the hospital's annual banquet in June. His wife was well on her way to being a better surgeon than he was, and despite everything that had recently happened, continued to dazzle her superiors with her skillful hands and razor sharp intuition. His daughter was brilliant in the breathtaking way a two-year-old often is, and had taken recently to babbling numbers from one to ten in two languages, thanks to Dora the Explorer.

And yet he felt like a piece of him was missing.

The room next to Emily's tortured him. It was just there, full of unfulfilled possibility. The door hadn't been opened in months, and the thought that a layer of dust had collected on the baby furniture they had stored in there made him sick.

When the crisp fall air billowed into Seattle, Derek couldn't help but feel remotely helpless when it came to the matter of his continued grief. He couldn't shake the thought that they should be preparing for the arrival of a new baby in a few months. He had been ready to do the baby thing again, anxious for the 4 AM feedings and gurgling coos of an infant in his arms once more.

He knew that it wasn't the best analogy, but the situation had started to remind him of when he was in the third grade and his beloved dog Parker had gotten hit by a car. He'd cried for days, and screamed that he never wanted another dog ever again, but one day his father brought home a brand new chocolate labrador puppy and told him that the only way to fill the hole in his heart was to love another dog.

It scared him, and he knew it could never be the way he wanted it to be originally, but he wanted another baby.

One night in October, he joined Meredith in bed after getting home from work fairly late. She'd been asleep, but had woken when the mattress shifted beneath her to accommodate his weight.

"Hey," he mumbled against her skin.

"Hey," she replied lazily, lingering between consciousness and unconsciousness for just a moment to welcome him home.

"Mer…." He woke her after he realized she'd fallen back asleep.

"Hmmm?"

"I was thinking… Mer, wake up," he prodded.

"What, Derek?" she muttered grouchily.

"I was thinking…maybe we should try to have another baby."

With that, she woke up completely, and turned to face him.

"What?"

"I've just been thinking…when my dog died when I was eight…."

"A baby isn't a dog, Derek."

"I know. I know that," he sighed. "It's just…Sam didn't replace Parker…but it felt better, loving him. He wasn't Parker. But it felt better."

Meredith hesitated before she finally spoke. "I've been kind of thinking about it too. A little," she quickly added.

"You have?"

She nodded.

"Do you want to?" he asked.

"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe." She paused, and he watched her study his features in the darkness. When she reached out to touch him, just grazing his arm gently with her fingertips, the gesture took him by surprise. She'd been so reserved lately. Withdrawn, even. "You really want this?"

"Yeah, I do," he realized aloud, the full intensity of it hitting him square in the heart as the words escaped his lips.

"Ok," she whispered.

"Yeah?"

She nodded again.

He let her make the first move. When she kissed him, he felt it everywhere, down to his fingertips, like she was breathing the fire back into him. Briefly, he marveled to himself how they had gone without sex for so long, especially when it had been what defined them in the beginning, and had been so important for so long. How had it been three months?

She moaned incoherently into his mouth as he reached up to cup her breasts over her shirt, and he felt his body respond to her caresses. He kissed her harder, his tongue delving into her mouth, and when she tugged on the hem of his shirt, he was happy to lift his arms and oblige. He helped her lose her shirt, and immediately, her hands traced hot lines across his skin.

As they slowly peeled off the rest of their clothes, all Derek could think about was Meredith. Meredith. I'm touching Meredith. His lips traveled down to her neck, and her hand wrapped around him. She threaded one of her legs over his and drew him closer, and as good as her hands on him felt, being close to her again, and Meredith being Meredith, felt even better. His hands roamed over her body, reclaiming what was his, reclaiming his old life.

"Derek," she panted. "Derek…."

"Meredith," he choked out as the pressure built inside him. Kissing her neck, taking in the scent of her - he needed more.

He was about to go, to relieve the maddening tension building in him, when, breathlessly, anxiously, her palms pushed on his shoulders, like she was trying to push him away.

Gathering all his resolve, he stopped. Looking down at her, he saw the tears well in her eyes. She looked…scared.

She shook her head violently back and forth, looking slightly frustrated with herself. "Do you have a condom?" she asked, as a few tears spilled over and down her face.

* * *

Meredith hadn't liked Christmas at all until three years ago. She knew that that simple fact made her an oddity in normal American society, but she couldn't help it. The holiday cheer and the Claymation scenes of children opening presents in front of their adoring parents hadn't been part of her childhood. Her memories of Christmas didn't include a belief in Santa Claus or chestnuts roasting on an open fire or any of the wonderful things she heard about in Christmas carols. Her Christmases were more along the lines of opening a few gifts that she knew the nanny had been paid extra to pick out, and eating reheated frozen turkey from Thanksgiving. So, when you took that into consideration, who could really blame her for not feeling like Tiny Tim come December?

It'd changed for her three years ago though. Derek loved Christmas. She had his ring on her finger, and she found herself positively giddy as she holed herself up in their bedroom and wrapped up a tiny box for him in red and gold plaid paper. She knew it had been done before, to wrap up the positive pregnancy test as a Christmas gift, but she figured they deserved something normal, homey, at least once in their lives.

He had cried when he opened it. Actually cried. Not just a little glistening in his eyes, but full on euphoric tears as he held the test in his hand, dumbfounded, staring at Meredith with such joy on his face. That moment was when she started liking Christmas.

This December, she had to admit to herself that she was expecting more out of this Christmas a few months ago. She was expecting to be eight months pregnant, spending the holiday waiting for a new baby. Maybe they would have invited Derek's family out to Seattle since she wouldn't be able to fly to New York, and they'd be gathered around the tree with the three of them now, like a real live family.

"Mommy, look what Santa bring me!" Emily squealed, running over to her holding a pink box and jumping up and down excitedly.

"Oh, wow, Em!" Meredith replied with the appropriate level of excitement. "What's this?"

"That a baby doll," Emily nodded, thrusting the box at Meredith.

She looked up at Derek. This wasn't one of the gifts they had picked out together a few weeks earlier, the set of art supplies and the sled and the red wagon and the tea set, or one of the dozen other things they'd chosen at the store. He shrugged guiltily.

"Just one more," he mouthed.

Things had been strained between them at best since the night they had almost tried to have another baby. Embarrassed and frustrated, still in sometimes numbing emotional pain, Meredith retreated into her work, burying herself in surgeries and nights on-call when things were particularly difficult. Surgery forced her to focus on the open brain in front of her, rather than her own crumbling life. She could fix brains. But she was at a loss for what to do when Derek looked at her the way he did sometimes, like she was actively taking something away from him.

Once all the gifts had been opened, she held Emily close against her chest and watched her play with the doll in her hands. They were both still in their pajamas, Meredith in a pair of Derek's sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt and Emily in a set of white pajamas with red Santa hats printed on them. As soon as Derek took the doll out of the box for her, Emily had crawled into Meredith's lap, curling into her mother's arms. Meredith stroked Emily's hair and cradled her like an infant while she touched the doll's hair and then pushed her plastic eyelids closed. She wore a blissful smile on her face, looking so thoroughly happy that Meredith's breath caught in her throat as she watched her.

She couldn't ignore the twisting feeling in her stomach, a guilty gnawing that she still wanted more from her life. How could she think, for even one instant, that this child – this perfect, beautiful, blameless child – was not enough? Why had she let herself become a shadow of the person she used to be, something so much less than what Emily deserved? She had to make herself stop mourning over everything she didn't have, and focus on the child that she did have. Though she still felt empty, empty, empty, she couldn't deny that her arms were so full.

"I a lucky girl, Mommy," Emily said, sated and content.

Meredith pressed her lips to the top of Emily's head. Despite everything, her daughter adored her, even when she didn't deserve to be adored. Even when, by her own admission, she had been distracted by her grief. Emily still loved her. How could that not be enough?

"You are a lucky girl," she murmured.

And you are enough.

* * *

"Daddy, I ready!" Emily called loudly up the stairs.

"Bean, one second, ok?" Derek replied, rummaging through his drawers for an extra pair of socks.

He'd been promising her for weeks, ever since they had watched a choice handful of Christmas movies together, and she'd seen other children sledding and playing in fluffy white snow. Two and a half year old Emily had to have a chance to do that too, and this morning was the morning. All of the variables had fallen into place: Derek had the day off, and Seattle had been coated with four inches of fresh snow overnight. When Meredith expressed concern, Emily had shrieked that she was a big girl. When Derek swore that he'd watch her like a hawk the entire time, that had settled it. They were going sledding.

While Meredith finished getting Emily ready downstairs, which involved a lot of begging her to go potty before she layered on the warm, waterproof clothing, Derek pulled on two of everything upstairs. Two pairs of sweatpants, two sweatshirts, two pairs of socks, finishing up with a fleece jacket. The sheer volume of clothing made him sweat as he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on a pair thick-soled boots.

He was almost finished getting ready, and had just tied the laces of his second boot, when something on Meredith's dresser caught his eye. The packet of pills was sitting right on the dresser; Meredith hadn't even attempted to hide it, like she was daring him to say something.

Birth control.

And she hadn't said a word about it.

To be fair, neither of them had talked about having another baby outright, not since the debacle of the night that was barely an almost, though Derek had certainly hinted over the past several months that he'd like nothing more. Meredith had altogether avoided the topic, and was currently avoiding most conversation with him if he was being perfectly honest.

The grief felt different to him now, less of a gnawing pain in his gut and more of a dull ache that had settled deep in his chest. The strain of trying to keep Meredith close, when it seemed like all she wanted to do was run, had bruised him but he kept holding on.

He sucked in a breath, got up, and took the packet in his hand. Several pills had already been punched out. He sighed, and stared at the empty holes in disbelief. She could have at least told him.

He felt like Meredith had loosened remaining grip he had on her with this omission, like she had pried his clenched fingers away one by one, and now he was just freefalling. How far to the bottom, he wasn't quite sure, but it felt like quite a distance from where he was to where Meredith remained.

He didn't want a replacement. Or a Plan B. At all.

But he did want to continue with his life. He had to. They both owed it to themselves, to Emily, to each other. That was all he was asking her, to continue with life, and another baby, maybe even two more, had always been part of his plan. Meredith knew that. At least, he thought she did.

They'd never discussed losing the baby, ever. As far as he knew, not to anyone, let alone each other. He hadn't, anyway. Maybe they needed to, but she would barely talk to him at all, let alone about something so monumental.

Is this what they had come to? Sliding backwards down a slippery slope?

He couldn't help but feel the resentment bubble out from his stomach through his veins. He wasn't saying today, or next month, or even next year, but how long was she going to keep someday from him?

"Daddy!" Emily called again, wondering if he had forgotten.

"I'm coming, Bean!"

Downstairs, Emily was bundled up to the point that her face was barely visible, and her entire body was wrapped in layers of fleece and waterproof material.

"Are you an Eskimo?" Derek asked, barely able to contain amused laughter.

"I not a cookie," Emily said indignantly, and crossed her arms across her chest.

"What?" Meredith laughed.

"I not an Oreo," Emily muttered, growing frustrated when her parents tried to contain peals of laughter. "I am Emily Grace Shepherd."

"Em, not an Oreo," he chuckled. "An Eskimo," he pronounced as deliberately as he could.

"What that?"

"It's a person who loves cold weather and loves to play in the snow," Meredith interjected.

"Oh…I an Ekimo. Daddy, come on," she whined. She drew out every syllable as she tugged on his hand, and attempted to march towards the door.

She pulled, but she couldn't drag him away quite yet. He paused to stare at Meredith. She was still in her pajamas, a pair of flannel pants and the old reliable Dartmouth t-shirt that now had a hole in one elbow as well. His gaze felt like it was going right through her, an effect that apparently had not gone unnoticed on Meredith. He could have sworn he saw her squirm just a bit, and when her eyes met his, he knew that she knew he had seen the pills on the dresser.

He said nothing, and neither did she. She didn't back down, continuing to look back at him, unapologetic.

She had kept someday for herself.

* * *

She knew she hadn't been herself lately, and she knew that her marriage had taken a hit for it. The grief she felt over losing the baby had crippled her for months, and finally, she could feel herself starting to ease out of it. As the cloud started to lift, she could see the effect that the defensive walls she had put up around her had had on Derek. She had spent so many months pushing Derek, in so many words or sometimes with no words at all, away. Don't talk about this. I will shatter if you do. Don't touch me. Just leave me alone.

And eventually, he had.

At first, Meredith had hardly noticed it, just vaguely observed Derek curling into his own devastation, finally, after he stopped trying to take care of her. Things hadn't really changed for her; Derek had felt far away for a long time before he actually moved away from her of his own volition. A few days ago, though, when she woke up one morning, with Derek on the opposite end of the bed and his back towards her, and realized that their anniversary was in four days, this arrangement suddenly felt very wrong.

She couldn't mourn this baby forever. Cristina had, as gently as possible, tried to tell her that. Many times, even. Despite Cristina's well-meant advice, as the would-be milestones ticked by, Meredith couldn't help but let her mind drift to all of the wonderful things she was missing. Ultrasounds. Name discussions. Cravings. When the due date arrived three weeks ago, she'd spent almost every moment she wasn't working in bed with the shades drawn.

But when she woke up next to Derek, but still so far away from him, she woke up in more ways than one.

Now, on their third wedding anniversary, Meredith had managed to hastily throw together a plan in just a few days. Izzie had agreed to watch Emily overnight, quite gleeful with the thought that she'd get to play mommy for a night and also that Meredith had shown a glimmer of her old self merely in asking. On her day off, she'd gone to the mall and bought some new lingerie. Something expensive. Slutty. A little red number that, if she still knew Derek, he wouldn't be able to resist.

She'd tried to wake him up like she used to, curling around him and kissing his neck until he opened his eyes, but this morning, he was apparently altogether unaffected by it. When she told him she had something planned for him that night, he didn't seem to register that it was their anniversary today at all, and simply told her that he'd be home after his three surgeries.

Nonetheless, after going into the hospital and checking to make sure all of her post-op patients from the past several days were recovering nicely, she left work early and took Emily with her.

Late in the afternoon, she showed up at Izzie's house, the familiar home they'd once all shared and Meredith had sold to Izzie two years ago. Keeping it in the family, she had said. In that time, Alex, in his ever-charming despite being an asshole kind of way, had won Izzie over, and they had been living together ever since. At one time, Meredith remembered talking to Derek in hushed whispers at the annual hospital banquet that she was sure Alex would propose soon.

He had, but Meredith couldn't remember saying anything to Derek about it when it finally happened. She'd barely been able to muster up a passable level of happiness and excitement when Izzie told her herself.

Now she was making a concentrated effort to call back into existence Bright and Shiny Meredith. The Meredith with the dreamy eyes that was so in love with her husband with the perfect hair. The Meredith with the bright, beautiful daughter who thought she was lucky.

She sat at the kitchen counter with Izzie, drinking the iced tea that she had set out for her, and watched as Izzie's diamond ring caught the sun and sent rays of light bouncing all over the kitchen.

"You seem better, Mer," Izzie observed happily.

Emily, who until this moment was perfectly content to sit on her aunt's lap, started to wriggle, and Izzie set her down on the floor. Emily darted into the living room, and started to unpack her overnight bag herself so she could show Izzie all of the wonderful toys she had.

"I feel…kind of like me again," Meredith replied, almost proudly.

Izzie smiled widely, like she too was equally thrilled that Meredith was feeling like Meredith again, or was at least willing to act like Meredith for one night. "So is McDreamy going to get McLucky?"

"Izzie," Meredith hissed, rolling her eyes. She shrugged, and with a twinkle in her eye, added, "Well, that's the plan."

"How did I become the coconspirator to get Shepherd laid?" Izzie mused aloud.

"I'm Emily Grace Shepherd," Emily interjected in a high-pitched voice from her place on the living room floor when she caught mention of a name she recognized.

"That's your name," Meredith called cheerfully back, before returning her attention to Izzie. "And, yes, if it makes you feel any better, your official title can be coconspirator."

"It doesn't, really," she wrinkled her nose. "I wasn't even this involved in your sex life when we lived together. I don't want an official title. I just want to be the babysitter. No official titles."

"It was either you or Cristina."

"So what I'm really doing here is taking one for the team," Izzie finished.

"Whatever makes you feel most useful, Iz. I'll pick her up in the morning?"

"Yeah, that's fine," Izzie replied.

"So," Meredith said with a flourish as she stood up, "In the spirit of moving on."

"In the spirit of moving on," Izzie agreed. "Go have sex."

"Bye, Em," Meredith kissed the top of Emily's head while she absentmindedly played with the toys Meredith had packed for her. "Be good. I'll see you in the morning."

"Where my Daddy?"

"He's at the hospital. He'll see you in the morning too, ok?"

"Ok," Emily agreed. "Mommy, I go with you?"

"No, remember you're going to stay with Aunt Izzie tonight?" Emily stared at her blankly. "Remember how you're going to have a fun sleepover?"

"I sink I go with you instead," Emily decided, reaching her arms up for Meredith to pick her up.

"Em, we're going to have fun," Izzie promised. "And Uncle Alex is excited to see you too. He wants to play horsie with you. You can show me all your cool toys. What's this one?" she asked, holding up a doll.

"That a baby," Emily replied tersely, like if she could roll her eyes, she would have. "I sink I go with my Mommy." No offense, Izzie.

"How about you stay with Aunt Izzie and Uncle Alex tonight, and then tomorrow we do something super fun?" Meredith offered, doing her best to stave off the tears she knew were mere seconds away.

"Want to make cookies?" Izzie suggested brightly, and at that, Emily seemed to perk up a little.

"I eat all the cookies?" she asked.

"Sure, you can have as many as you want," she replied cheerfully. Three tops, she mouthed to Meredith. "But I need you to help me make them because you make the best."

"I make the goodest cookies in the whole world?"

"You do."

"Em, that sounds like fun," Meredith said brightly. "What do you think?"

"Ok," Emily finally agreed.

"I'll see you in the morning," Meredith tried again.

"Ok."

"Bye, Em," she repeated with another kiss.

"Mer, 375 for like 25 minutes, ok?" Izzie interjected, handing her a casserole dish covered in tinfoil.

"What's this?" Meredith asked.

"Chicken. You know, for dinner for you guys tonight."

"Coconspirator," she teased, making Izzie groan.

By nine o'clock that night, Derek still wasn't home. Meredith had taken to lounging on the couch in her sweatpants, picking at the chicken Izzie had made with her fingers, and flipping channels on TV. Even three craniotomies couldn't be more than a fourteen-hour day. This wasn't sexy. Old Meredith was back, not for one night only, but still. Where was Derek?

She tried to focus her attention on the television in front of her, where a large blonde woman was particularly focused in selecting one out of several numbered suitcases, held by an array of beautiful scantily-clad models. She agonized over her decision – three or eighteen, three or eighteen – like she was attempting to solve an advanced calculus problem, and Meredith realized that nothing except dumb luck and intuition was telling this woman that one case was better than the other. Just pick one; what's the difference? Meredith thought to herself. Finally, the woman selected case eighteen, for some convoluted reason about how she met her husband on the eighteenth hour of the eighteenth day on Eighteenth Street after she had just eaten eighteen peanuts at the bar – or something to that effect; Meredith didn't quite follow the woman's shrill yelps of anxiety.

When another woman, a twiggy brunette with legs for days, opened the suitcase to reveal a gold plate with $1000 emblazoned on it, the contestant literally jumped for joy. Literally screamed and almost cried at her good fortune. The host then posed a simple question – would she like to take the money that the show was willing to offer her now, an impressive $175,000, or would she like to open more suitcases and try to get even more money?

The woman hemmed and hawed over the decision, and consulted with her equally large and equally blonde family. Take the money, Meredith thought. Take it. It seems too good to be true because it is. Why would you chance something that is guaranteed and wonderful in a greedy attempt to have more? That is always the goal to have more – but there is a cap, and when you hit it, you will know. I understand this. Often, just when you think that you have it made, the carpet gets pulled out from under you and you feel like you've lost everything.

The woman decided to move forward with the game, because when it all boiled down to it, that's all it was anyway – a game. Her next move didn't go so well, and as Meredith watched her entire family hit their knees in disappointment, she found that she had a smug grin on her face. I told you so. You can't have everything.

She pulled another sliver of chicken off the plate and dropped it into her mouth with two plucked fingers. Nine-thirty. Where was he? She had monitored the board earlier that day like a hawk, staking out when he would be in surgery, and when he would be getting out, a modus operandi that she had used…well, never before. It made her feel a bit like a stalker to do it, and it felt especially strange when she considered the fact that she had been doing everything in her power to avoid him at work for months. She hadn't forgotten that elevator confessionals were his specialty.

By ten o'clock, she had given up on the idea of dinner entirely, and had taken some of Izzie's cupcakes into the living room with her. She had tried to resist, started by just licking the icing off of one of them. A few minutes later, she'd let herself eat half the cupcake, and the rest of it had followed soon after. Before she even realized what she was doing, she held two chocolatey wrappers in her fingers.

It was then that she picked up the phone and paged Cristina, knowing she was putting in extra nights on-call to balloon herself up for the chief resident race. She wasn't going to beg for Derek, but she could find out what the hell was taking him so long. His third surgery couldn't have lasted past six, unless there were complications.

Cristina called her back a few minutes later, answering her page with a gruff, "Aren't you supposed to be having some hot sex right now?"

"If I was, do you think I'd be paging you?"

"It's been awhile, I don't know. Maybe McDreamy would have already been McDone for the night."

"McDre…No, Derek isn't even here yet."

"Well where the hell is he?"

"I have no idea!" Meredith exclaimed. "Still there, I guess! That's why I paged you. Did he get held up in the OR?"

"Meredith, I really haven't creepily stalked Shepherd at all today. Or ever. I was kind of busy saving lives all day to notice what he's been doing. Why don't you just page him?"

"Well now it doesn't even matter. I already ate half of the fucking chicken with my hands, Cristina. And two cupcakes. Do you know how disgusting that is? The dinner isn't happening, and he'll be lucky if he gets sex at all tonight. If he ever gets home."

"I'm sure he'll be home soon. He probably just got held up in surgery. There was a fatality earlier; maybe it was his, I didn't see."

"Yeah, maybe."

"He won't forget. You essentially promised him sex, didn't you? No guy is going to forget about that. Well, Shepherd won't, at least. I have to go though, I'm getting a 911 page. I'll talk to you in the morning, Mer, bye."

She hung up so quickly that Meredith didn't have time to say anything back. Maybe Cristina was right, even if it was only on the grounds that Derek Shepherd liked sex, and she knew just how long it had been since he'd gotten any. In Cristina's mind, that simple fact alone wouldn't keep him away.

Meredith lamented the failure of her plan, the one truly romantic thing she had tried to do in months. This was it. This was supposed to be the way that she would show Derek that she was still a good wife, that she could still be the woman he fell in love with, that loss hadn't changed all that forever. Or at least this was supposed to be her attempt to prove all those things, to make herself become them again, and so far, it was failing miserably.

She set the empty plate of chicken on the coffee table, and reclined back onto the couch, propping her feet up on the far armrest.

Derek liked sex. He was good at it, and he knew it. And she hadn't been exactly careful in not dropping a single hint over the past few days that on the day of their anniversary, he might come home to find her already in bed, wearing a lacy red thing that she didn't care if he ripped. That alone should have caught Derek's attention, and it did…most times. But she hoped that when the night of their anniversary found the two of them alone, he'd be there for more than just the sex. She hoped that he'd be there at least partly because he missed her.

She woke up to the sound of her cell phone ringing, vibrating across the table, about an hour later. Groggily, she blinked the sleep out of her eyes and fumbled to answer her phone. For a moment, she forgot where she was, thinking herself in an on-call room at the hospital, but the plate of cold chicken scraps and the TV blaring low in the background brought her back to reality.

"Meredith," Derek's voice crackled across the line.

"Hey," Meredith mumbled tiredly.

"Hey, listen, I can't talk long but I'm not going to be home tonight. Incoming trauma, GSW to the head and the guy is still alive. I'll see you in the morning, ok?"

"…What?" Meredith asked, sure she was mistaken in the way that she had heard him.

"Head trauma. I can't really talk, Mer; they're prepping him now. There's a lot of bleeding, the bullet has to come out. It's lodged in the temporal lobe. I just wanted to let you know I'm staying."

"Oh," Meredith replied dejectedly. "But - "

"I have to go, but we'll talk in the morning," he offered hastily. "I don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow yet. Kiss Em goodnight for me."

"Em's not…."

"Bye, Meredith." And he hung up.

"Em's not here," she finished, to no one in particular in the empty house.

Neither are you.

When I finally am, you're not.

She drew her sweatshirt across her thin frame, and put the plates in the sink and the wrappers in the trash. Upstairs, she tried not to look at the lingerie she had hung up in the bathroom. Instead, she brushed her teeth in silence, and crawled into bed alone.

She was doing her best to try to fall back to sleep, to forget that this day had ever happened, but her mind was racing. Mostly, she was frustrated with herself for yet again believing that she could chance good enough for great. Stop trying to have more. Just enough is exactly that, just enough.

The concept of it all was working in a twisted reverse on Meredith. Try though she may to have more, each time she did, she wound up with less. It was her stupid fault for being too stubborn, too greedy, to just surrender and take what life had already been generous enough to give.

Derek didn't cheat. He adored Emily with a fervor that her own father had never had for her. She was sure enough that Derek still loved her, at least a little bit. Though she wasn't positive, she was just going to have to force herself to accept that sure enough would have to be good enough.

It was Derek who had shaken her out of this belief years ago, made her believe that she was meant to have everything, even that she deserved it. It was him, with his honest eyes, that knocked the breath out of her time after time, first drunkenly in a bar, then in a hospital elevator, and years later, on the altar. But ever since she had been trying to wrap her fingers around everything, to pull the stars down to her, it seemed like loss followed closely behind like a phantom everywhere she went.

Maybe the more naïve version of Derek had left too. Maybe she was, again, a little slow on the uptake. Nobody she knew believed you could have everything, that good things would happen because you had a good heart and you deserved them. Not even Derek anymore. And here she was, some stupid fool, still clinging to that dream.

She'd already lost more times than she cared to count. Her whole life was defined by opening just one suitcase too many.

Derek had stopped trying. So, so would she.

She'd take what she had left and hoard it close to her heart, protect it from destruction, watch it grow but never multiply. Maybe that would be ok. Everything in life was just a matter of getting used to it.

She surrendered.

She'd already lost. It was just a matter of allowing herself to recognize it.

* * *

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Meredith blustered into Emily's room as quietly as she could on a cool night in the beginning of April. "I got held up at the hospital. They needed neuro consults on a couple of kids – car went right into a telephone pole a couple hours ago. They think the driver was drunk but they haven't gotten the tox screen back yet," she rambled before Derek cut her off abruptly.

"She waited for you," he whispered. He was already in his sweats, sitting in Emily's rocking chair and holding her tightly with both arms. She was fast asleep, curled into Derek's embrace in her favorite yellow pajamas. Her loose curls, still a little damp from her bath, streaked across her cheeks and forehead.

Meredith eased a sleeping Emily out of Derek's arms and into her own; the child barely stirred as she switched hands. Emily settled against her chest, and rested her head on Meredith's shoulder as her arms unconsciously draped around Meredith's neck. "I love you," she murmured gently, the words floating by Emily's ear like a lullaby. "I love you so much. I'll see you in the morning, ok? Goodnight."

Emily muttered something incomprehensible, and never really woke up as Meredith laid her down in her bed. "I'm sorry," Meredith said again, and pressed her lips softly to Emily's forehead.

"You were supposed to put her to bed tonight. She waited up asking for you," he said, pulling Emily's door closed behind them.

"I know, I know," Meredith replied guiltily. "I'm sorry."

"Don't tell me. Tell her." His voice was bitter, laced in anger. This was the third time in two weeks that she'd done this. Emily went to bed promptly at 8:30. He knew that, and she knew that, and they'd long ago promised that if they weren't going to be home to kiss her goodnight, Emily would at least know about it beforehand.

"Derek," she whispered, stopping for a moment before adding, viciously, like a wounded animal, "You do it too."

She regarded him wearily, staring at him with such exhaustion in her eyes. It was the little things, he realized. The little hurts. They just kept building. Stacking themselves sloppily one by one on top of the thing that neither would talk about.

It was almost a year ago to the day that Meredith had rubbed against him in bed, told him she was pregnant, and turned his world upside down again. It had felt so good. So, so good.

He stopped before he let himself go down that road again. At first, he didn't think anything would ever hurt more than losing the baby. But over the past few weeks, he realized that Meredith wasn't just slipping away anymore; she was full-on running. He knew that he had found something that would hurt even worse – a marriage ripped at the seams.

"Are you ever going to stop running away?" he asked.

"Are you?"

"Yeah," he breathed, slow but certain.

"When?" she countered back, but didn't wait for his response. "I'm going to bed."

Derek stood there, feeling quite abandoned in the hallway. This house, set on his wide open, lush green property, suddenly felt like it was closing in on him, trapping him inside his grief at everything he had already lost, or was slowly but surely in the process of losing. He wanted to get away, to go somewhere where he couldn't hide behind a surgical mask and a busy OR board, and neither could she. He wasn't going to lose a marriage because they'd been hurt too badly to try to fix it. Not again. If she insisted on running, he'd follow her until he caught her, because he knew that, despite everything, he loved her too much not to.

His own subtle slip into apathy shocked him, and he hadn't fully realized he was doing it until Meredith's harsh words just a few seconds ago.

You do it too.

Guilty as charged.


	8. At the edge of the ocean

_Oh, we can begin again.  
Shed our skin, let the sun shine in.  
At the edge of the ocean,  
We can start over again._

* * *

By the middle of July, the ocean had finally gotten comfortable enough to do more than dip their toes in, and the three of them began to take full advantage of the warmer temperatures. More than once, they went to a nearby jetty and fished in the early hours of the morning. Well, Derek fished, and Meredith laughed as Emily tried to imitate her father and cast her own line with a toy fishing pole. One day, they rented a boat and took it out on the water for an entire afternoon. Emily had taken to the ocean like a fish, and begged to go swimming nearly every day. Derek, in the spirit of fondly remembered childhood summers at the Hamptons, was happy to oblige, and Meredith, who felt slightly lighter in the past few weeks, willfully came along every time they set out.

On this particular day, late in the afternoon, Meredith stood next to Derek, up to her shins in the cool water, as he tugged on Emily's new boogie board. When she saw a few little boys riding on them over the weekend, she insisted that she wanted to try it too. She picked this particular one out herself at the toy store a few days ago, but a rainstorm had prevented her from trying it out until today. It was the smallest model the store carried, pink with yellow Hawaiian flowers on it. Emily lay on her stomach on the foam board, splaying her hands firmly around the top of it, and looked up at Derek expectantly.

"Pull it faster, Daddy!"

Derek laughed and tugged the string, gliding her across the shallow sheen of water before the next wave rolled in and unsteadied her just a bit.

They were the only ones on the beach for nearly a block, and they found that this was often the case during the week, when most people went home to their jobs. Meredith found it slightly odd that most of the beachfront homes weren't owned by the town's year-round residents, but rather by rich city slickers from Seattle and other nearby places. Most of them only stayed from Friday to Sunday, so they found that their private beach access became even more so come Monday morning.

She glanced down the stretch of sand to her left. The only people remotely near them were an elderly couple about a half a block away, who seemed to have taken a break from their books to watch Emily. They looked at her family with wistful expressions on their faces, like they had children and grandchildren hours away that they didn't see enough.

"Mommy, look at me!" Emily shrieked, grabbing her attention back quite forcefully. Her blue bathing suit was soaked up to her chest from the splashing and the small but steady waves rolling in.

_Meredith, can't you see that I'm busy right now?_

"I see you!" Meredith smiled, matching Emily's excitement. "What's Daddy doing?"

"He's pullin' me!"

"I think he's going pretty fast, don't you?"

"I want faster!"

Derek pulled hard to the time of the incoming wave and Emily rushed that much closer to shore amidst the foamy white surf. He let go of the string and she rode the wave in herself until the sand stopped her.

"Why did you let go of me, Daddy?" Emily asked, trying to decide if she had been afraid or thrilled at Derek's decision to do so.

"That's how you do it. Can I show you something, Bean?" he asked, fetching her board from her as she splashed back towards them.

He waded out further, until he was up to his waist. The water glistened on his bare chest and he shook his wet hair out of his eyes, turning around and eyeing Meredith and Emily with a wry smirk. He glanced back at the rolling ocean a few times, gripping the board tightly with both hands. When the pull of the ocean caught itself in that perfect limbo between sucking the end of one wave back in and gathering momentum to push another out, Derek leaped forward. His stomach hit the board with a clap, and as the water billowed around him, he rode the current all the way past Meredith and Emily onto land.

"Daddy!" Emily shrieked delightedly, clapping her hands when Derek stood up.

"And that is how you ride a wave in," he explained with a boyish euphoria. He took the board up with one hand and carried it back to Emily. "I haven't done that in 20 years."

"And it all came rushing back to you?" Meredith asked. She gave him an amused once-over, a grin spreading itself across her features to match his.

"Quite literally, don't you think?" he teased.

Derek ran a hand through his dripping hair and slicked it back off his face. Over the past few weeks, he had developed a sun-kissed glow, plainly visible in that instant, when his swim trunks slid down no more than a half inch to reveal a definitive tan line. Water droplets clung to the muscles of his back and arms, and Meredith found herself resisting the urge to lick her lips. She couldn't remember a time when she had found him sexier. Which, she supposed, was something special in itself, just to notice something like that.

"I do that too!" Emily couldn't get back on the board fast enough. She clamored for Derek to give it back, and he reluctantly handed it over and helped her get situated. He curled her fingers tightly around the board, and pulled with both hands, steadying her so she could wait for the perfect wave too.

Over the past few weeks, Meredith had noticed a marked improvement in their relationship. They hadn't fought. Though there were many words, none of them were cross. Slowly, Meredith allowed herself to get used to a new kind of normal. Derek teasing her. Derek sleeping in bed with her. Every night. With his back towards her most of the time, but still. Derek teaching her and Emily how to make sandcastles. The three of them doing things. Normal things. Talking. Laughing. Normal. Which was all she ever wanted anyway.

The strength of his hand wrapped around hers that afternoon a few weeks before formed a channel of communication; it had told her, in so few words, that he understood about the baby. He felt it too. Whenever she felt herself slipping under in the days since then, it had helped to think of that. The days ticked by, inching them closer and closer to the one year anniversary of the end as they knew it, and there were moments when her thoughts dipped back into the heartbreaking and the regretful. Now, though, she had another marquee scrolling through her mind, in bright, shiny letters saying that he feels this too. You are not alone. Derek, too, has faced this utter devastation.

She stood aside as the next wave worked itself from a ripple to a small curl. Derek's hands were on Emily's board, steadying her, setting her up. She watched him pull Emily back and forth, and when she gained enough momentum and the wave started to crash around her, he let her go. Emily shrieked and rushed forward with a lurch. The wave seemed to keep going and going; the strength of it loosening Emily's grip and throwing her off the board so quickly that there was no way she could have steadied herself.

Meredith watched her daughter's head disappear under the water and though the spot where Emily fell was probably less than a foot deep, fear immediately gripped her throat.

She was only two. She couldn't swim.

Meredith darted forward, but instantly, Derek was already there. She couldn't understand how swiftly he had managed to get to her, but he reached down and pulled Emily up by the arm within seconds after she slipped under. In one uniform motion, he swooped down and grabbed her, before the movement of the water could take her one inch further.

Emily coughed and spluttered, wiping at her eyes with one hand and gripping Derek's hand firmly with the other.

"Bean, you took a little spill, huh?" Derek prodded, swinging her arm back and forth. He smiled down at her, and Emily looked up at him, then at Meredith, like she didn't know what to think. She coughed once more, a mixture of fear and surprise on her face.

"Em, are you ok?" Meredith asked worriedly. Emily had gone under. Just for a second, and Derek had pulled her out right away, but still. She went under.

Emily coughed again, harder this time, and reached up to Derek. He took her up into his arms, and held her flush against his stomach. Her bathing suit was completely drenched, her hair dripping on his bare shoulders. She gripped his waist with her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Daddy, I…," her voice wavered, and she burst into tears.

"It's ok," Derek comforted. "Sometimes you fall off, and your face gets wet, but that's ok."

"It scared you though, didn't it?" Meredith asked, placing a hand on Emily's arm.

"Yeah," Emily sobbed. She rubbed at her eyes again, and clutched at Derek. She looked more shocked than anything else, spooked at the thought that she could fall into suffocating darkness with no warning.

"Daddy pulled you out," she soothed. "You're ok."

"Daddy pull me out," Emily nodded.

They let the next few waves pass by in silence. Derek held Emily in his arms and waited for her to calm down, and Meredith followed Emily's gaze back to shore. Her board had washed up onto the sand, the water gently lapping pitifully against it as it laid there unused.

"Do you want to go home?" Meredith asked.

Emily looked at Meredith, and then back at the board, and mulled it over. "I try again?" she asked hopefully.

"You want to try it again?" Meredith was cautious. Emily had been swimming a few times before at the pool at Meredith and Derek's gym, and even had a few weeks experience in the ocean, but had never put her head under the water before. Not even at bath time. Every night, Meredith blocked her face from the flow of the water by forming a visor with one hand, and poured cupful after cupful of water over her shampooed hair until the soap was out.

"I sink so."

"That's my brave girl," Derek grinned. He eased her out of his arms slowly and dipped her tiny feet in the water before lowering her down completely. Leaving her with Meredith, he darted back to shore and grabbed her board.

When the next good wave rolled in, Emily, in perfect imitation of her father, held on tight and rode it all the way on to the sand.

She jumped up and down, so thrilled that she had done it all by herself. Derek laughed, and rushed to tell his daughter about the finer points of boogie boarding, like he had been waiting all of his adult life for a protégée.

Meredith was sure she had never been prouder. All of her life, she had been taught never to fall. A fall was always preceded by a stumble, and to stumble was to admit that you were caught unfocused. That you could be unsteadied. But Meredith did fall. In fact, she found herself underwater and facedown in the sand many times, always at a loss for how to proceed. Ellis had drilled into her that confidence and focus was the singular path to success, but had left Meredith at a disadvantage when she failed to advise her on what to do when the occasional, yet inevitable, tumbles into darkness did occur.

Ellis' daughter might not know how to get up after a fall, but Meredith's daughter, though she had hesitated briefly, had gotten up. She didn't run away. She wanted to try again. Meredith was so full of pride that she could hardly stand it.

Emily ran back as fast as she could, sloshing through the water and carrying her board with both hands.

Emily thrust her board up at Derek and asked him to help her get started again.

Emily slipped under. Emily allowed Derek to pull her back up. Emily was trying again.

Meredith let a slow smile spread across her lips. She could do to take a page out of her daughter's book.

* * *

"Derek, what do I do with these?" Meredith asked a few hours later, holding three potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil.

Derek looked up from the campfire he was slowly building on the sand. The black cotton of his t-shirt stretched tight across his back as he leaned forward, resting on his heels. "Haven't you ever been camping before?"

"No, Davy Crockett, I haven't," Meredith retorted.

"Just give them to me. I'll just chuck them in the fire in a few minutes."

"And how do you propose we get them out, Daniel Boone?"

He clicked a pair of metal tongs at her. "Are you just going to call me every frontier-y, campy name you can think of?"

"Yeah," she shrugged. "What else do you need?"

"I wrapped up some chicken and vegetables in foil. They're in the fridge; you can bring those out too. Where's Em?"

"She's sitting on the couch waiting for me to change her. Keep building that fire," she scrambled to think of another name, "Paul Bunyan." Derek smirked, and poked at the fire with a piece of driftwood. "We'll be out in a minute."

It felt good to tease him. Wives were supposed to tease their husbands, weren't they? In the spirit of trying again. In the spirit of getting back up after she fell.

In the house, she changed Emily into a green sleeveless shirt and white pants, rolling them up to her shins. Meredith had already changed into olive linen pants, tied at the waist with a drawstring, and a tight black tank top.

"I should get my flops?" Emily asked, dancing and twirling eagerly around the room, just waiting for the next wonderful thing to happen.

"No, you don't need any shoes. We're going back to the beach. Go ahead outside."

Meredith took the chicken out of the fridge, along with some disposable dinnerware Derek had left on the counter, and followed Emily on to the back deck, retracing their footprints back to Derek. While they were gone, he had built the fire up and had thrown the potatoes into the flames.

Their beach chairs were already settled in the sand, towels draped over the backs and the fire a comfortable distance away. Meredith sank down into her chair, and Emily followed suit, her boogie board sitting in the sand next to her. Meredith burrowed her toes under the sand, and Derek took the chicken from her and put it in the fire next to the potatoes. He poked at the fire a little more and mopped at the sweat that had formed on his brow from the heat while she watched him curiously.

"Why are you doing that, Daddy?" Emily asked, getting up from her chair and inching forward. She squatted next to Derek and stared into the fire.

"This is how we're going to cook our dinner," Derek explained. "That fire is very hot so it's like an oven outside. And then we put the food in the fire and a little bit later, we take it out and eat it."

"Oh," Emily said. She inched forward, but Derek stopped her with one arm and forced her to scoot back.

"Not too close, Bean, ok? It's dangerous."

"Only for grown-ups?"

"Yeah, only for Mommy or Daddy to go near. But for right now, we just have to wait for it to cook the food. Everything is already done."

"When do we eat the food?"

"In a little while after it cooks," he explained. She furrowed her brow.

"Em, we can just play until it's ready. How does that sound?" Meredith interjected.

"You can chase me," Emily decided, hopping to her feet and breaking into a run. She looked back at them after barely getting started with an impish grin on her face. When she realized they hadn't moved yet, she reminded them what they were supposed to be doing. "Chase me!" she shouted.

"You go," Derek grinned. "I'll keep an eye on the fire."

Emily ran a little more, her little arms pumping seriously at her sides, and though Meredith followed her down the beach, it wasn't quick enough for her. Every few seconds, she stopped and turned around, and refused to move again until Meredith lunged forward as if she were about to break into a sprint and come after her. Every time she did that – at least six or seven times before they decided to turn around – she shrieked and burst into giggles before darting ahead.

"Mommy, chase me! Chase me!" Emily begged every so often, when Meredith started to lag behind.

They made it almost three blocks before Meredith allowed herself to catch Emily. She scooped Emily into her arms from behind and squeezed her, causing her to scream delightedly, like she had just found out she was a winner on a game show.

Meredith buried her nose in the crook of Emily's neck and took a deep breath. She still smelled like baby – like powder and milk and innocence – but now the familiar scent that was so distinctly Emily was mixed with the salty smell of the ocean and sweet coconut-scented shampoo.

"Em, let's go back and find Daddy, ok? Our dinner should be ready soon. Are you getting hungry?"

"Yeah, Mommy, I starving," Emily announced. She followed Meredith when she turned around and started to walk back the other way.

"You're starving?" Meredith asked incredulously. "Well, Daddy and I better feed you then."

"What are we going to eat?" She threw her hands up to emphasize the sheer impossibility of the question.

"Potatoes and vegetables and chicken. Daddy made it."

"Mommy?"

"Yeah, Em?"

"Is _Chicka Chicka Boom Boom_ a chicken?"

"No, that's just a funny word."

"Like in my book?"

"Yeah, it's just a pretend word in your book."

"Oh," Emily said, continuing to walk alongside Meredith. She yelped a little and darted back when a particularly strong wave rolled up, drenching her feet unexpectedly, but kept walking. "Mommy?"

"What?"

"Is a chicken a bird?"

"Yeah. A chicken is a kind of bird."

"Like _'Are You My Mother?'_ "

"No, that's not the same kind of bird as a chicken. A chicken is a different kind of bird than in the book."

"We eat the birds?"

"Yeah, people eat birds," Meredith said, silently begging some higher power that she would not have to get into a discussion about vegetarianism with her daughter.

"We can eat birds for dinner?"

"Yep, people eat birds for dinner. It's allowed."

"And lunchtime?"

"Yeah, sometimes at lunchtime too," Meredith smiled. "You like chicken."

"Chicken is yummy," Emily nodded, skipping along in the sand. She looked around as she walked, observing a few seagulls flying over the ocean, dipping down and scouring for food. "Do birds swim?"

"Some of them do," Meredith explained. "Not all of them."

"Only the grown-up ones?"

"No, baby ones can swim too. But ducks can swim and chickens can't, and seagulls can swim, but turkeys can't."

"Oh," Emily replied. She waited a moment or two before she asked her next question. "Why they not swim?"

"Only some special birds can swim."

"I can swim!"

"Are you a bird?" Meredith asked, running a hand over Emily's hair.

"No!" Emily giggled. "I am a girl."

"A big girl?"

"Uh huh," she nodded.

"Not a baby?"

"No! I three years old!"

"Not yet," Meredith reminded her. "Your birthday is next month."

"I get a birthday cake?" she asked. She didn't remember her second birthday, or her first. All she knew about birthdays was what she read about in the books she had. She simply knew that birthdays were a time when your parents doted on you and you got cake and presents and treats just because you were you.

"You can have any kind of birthday cake you want," Meredith promised.

"And then I blow out the candles and I three years old?"

"That's what makes you three years old," she agreed.

It was barely another half a block until the two of them reached Derek again. He had buried the food in hot ash, and was in the process of removing it when they got back. He'd sliced the tinfoil pouches open, and steam poured out of each one, revealing three tender chicken breasts with mixed vegetables heaped on top, and soft potatoes, one of which Derek had already mashed for Emily.

Meredith couldn't help but be a little surprised at how well the food had turned out. The tinfoil was completely blackened, but everything else was cooked perfectly. She was pleased to admit to herself that she was wrong, that she had expected to come back and find everything burnt and hadn't at all.

Emily walked right up to Derek, just as he was about to sit down in his chair, and tapped him on the shoulder. "Daddy, a chicken is a bird," she announced.

Derek first shot her an amused grin, and then looked up at Meredith, who merely shrugged, before he offered a reply. "I know," he said. "Who told you that?"

"Mommy. But people can eat birds cause the rules," she babbled. "Only they can't swim good like me. Mommy said."

"Isn't Mommy the smartest in the whole world?" Derek asked, biting back a laughing smile.

"No, me," Emily said definitively.

"Well, besides you," Derek conceded. "What about me?"

She shook her head. "No, me."

"Oh, I see. Are you so smart because your parents are both so smart?"

"No, it's cause I almost three years old."

* * *

Emily's energy depleted quickly after dinner, and she crawled into Meredith's lap while the three of them watched the fire go down. Meredith wrapped a towel around her and snuggled her close, brushing her fingers softly through Emily's thick hair. She swore it had gotten lighter recently from the sun exposure. She'd always thought that Emily favored Derek, but with her blonder hair, she had started to look more like a distinct version of Meredith. Emily's sandy feet poked out from the towel, her gangly legs dangling over Meredith's knees. One arm rested gently at her side, flush against Meredith's chest, while the other found Meredith's outstretched hand. Emily nestled her head into the crook of Meredith's arm and watched the fire with a dreamy look on her face.

Meredith felt Derek's eyes on her, gazing at her with a sort of quiet reverence as she spoke softly to Emily. A memory of clutching Emily's chubby hands in hers; easing her up and showing her how to take her first tentative steps came rushing back to her. She was only wearing a ratty old pair of grey sweatpants and a Columbia med school t-shirt. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and the thought of putting on some makeup hadn't even crossed her mind that day. Emily, in only her diaper, took a hesitant, but momentous, first three steps before collapsing into Derek's arms.

Meredith traced the pads of her fingers lightly over Emily's open palms, following the fortune lines etched into her skin. This perfect child is my daughter, she marveled. Mine. How did someone like you come from someone like me?

"Did you have fun today, Em?"

"Yeah," she breathed.

"I did too. You're such a good swimmer."

"I love the ocean," she murmured, her voice already heavy with sleep as Meredith held her close. "We can swim right now, Mommy."

"No, I think we should wait until tomorrow because it's night time. Daddy showed you all kinds of things today, didn't he?"

"Yeah. Mommy, I did it all by myself."

"I know, I was watching you. How did you get to be so brave?" Meredith asked. She brushed a lock of hair away from Emily's face, and went back to holding Emily's hand.

"I almost three years old," Emily said matter-of-factly.

"You're right. So when you're three, you'll be the bravest girl in the whole world?"

"Uh huh," she replied. The words floated dreamily past Emily's lips, drenched in exhaustion. "I not having my bath tonight?"

"I think we can skip it for one night. Do you want your book tonight? _Chicka Chicka Boom Boom_?"

"I have it tomorrow," Emily mumbled, nuzzling her chin into Meredith's shoulder.

"You're such a good girl," Meredith whispered, lulling Emily into sleep with her words. "I love you so much."

"I love you, Mommy."

"I know. It's time to close your eyes, ok?"

Emily nodded as her eyes floated closed. Her grip on Meredith's hand slackened, and her body felt more fluid in Meredith's arms as she settled in and drifted off to sleep. Meredith wrapped the towel a little more tightly around Emily and slouched down in her chair, rubbing Emily's arm for a few moments until she was sure she was asleep. She kissed Emily's forehead gently, and looked up at Derek, who seemingly hadn't taken his eyes off them but had chosen to just sit there quietly and watch.

"She went down pretty quickly," he observed.

"She was probably exhausted from today," Meredith agreed. "You looked like you were having fun."

"I was. I haven't done that in forever. The last time I was at the beach was…."

"Tahiti," Meredith supplied.

"Yeah. And I don't really remember doing much boogie boarding then," he said with just a hint of flirty playfulness.

"You kept us pretty busy," Meredith said coyly.

"Well, we saw some of the beach," he smirked. "And what I saw, I liked _very_ much. I don't know if we really got in touch with the island though."

"Yeah, well, maybe another time," Meredith said, promising more without even thinking about it. "Did you used to go to the beach a lot?"

"Every summer growing up. We used to rent a place in Montauk for two weeks," he began. "Mom still made sure we got there even after -" he hesitated, "After Dad, we didn't go as long. She couldn't get off work two whole weeks, but we still went. Then in college, we'd take trips out there for the weekend - me, Addison, Mark, and whatever girl he was seeing at the time. Eventually, Addison and I bought the place in Southampton, but we didn't go very much," he sighed, like even years later, the memory of their indifference towards each other still pained him a bit. Or maybe simply reminded him of his current situation. "By then, I had forgotten why I liked it. I'm starting to remember now."

He fell silent, but didn't sink back into his chair. The fire had started to die down into hot embers, and when Derek reached forward to poke at it with a stick, sparks flew into the air, dancing red against the black sky.

"I never really went," Meredith spoke up. "Cape Cod for a week after I graduated from high school, but I don't really remember it. I think I was drunk for most of the trip, hung-over for the rest. Apparently that was the thing to do," she said, sarcasm creeping up briefly. "And then Tahiti."

"Tahiti was good," he nodded.

"I think she's going to be like you," Meredith whispered, looking down at the sleeping child in her arms. "Not even three and we must have been in there for over an hour today." Emily was snuggled flush against her, a warm, soft weight in her lap with a pulsing heartbeat Meredith felt just as much as her own. She had fallen asleep with the hint of a smile on her lips and a hand against Meredith's stomach. She looked so innocent that it almost broke Meredith's heart.

"We're going to have to watch her," he said. "I think that was the last little bit of fear coming out of her this afternoon."

"I know. We can't let her watch anybody _actually_ surf," Meredith said anxiously. "With the long board things or whatever. She'll want to do that too."

"Oh, that would be fun," Derek said, perking up despite feeling a little tired himself. Meredith raised one eyebrow and looked at him reproachfully, enough to make him smile sheepishly and amend himself. "Maybe in two or three years."

In two or three years, Emily would be starting school. Her hair would probably be longer. Maybe she'd be missing some teeth. She'd be taller, more grown-up. Not a baby anymore. Meredith would be finished her residency. More than finished, and well into her fellowship. Where would Derek be? Still head of Seattle Grace Neurosurgery, of course. That was a given. Maybe he'd even be Chief by then. But would they be coming home to each other every night? Would they still have the house - the beautiful home on his sprawling Seattle property, with the wraparound porch that Derek made sure was finished before Emily was born and the mat by the door where she could leave her muddy sneakers after morning walks? Or would she drive Emily somewhere else for the weekend? Maybe a slightly messy townhouse, close by, but still a car ride away, with a bedroom for Emily and a queen-size bed in the other bedroom where Meredith would sleep alone. It made her a little sick to think that in two or three years, there might be a set of divorce papers in her safety deposit box.

But right now, she had Emily in her arms, safe and sound, and Derek next to her wanting to make things work. She had a home that was a little cracked, but not broken yet. And Derek wanted to try. She'd spent so much time, an entire year almost, focusing on the past that she hadn't realized until it was almost too late that she had come so close to losing what she already had.

Worrying about the future seemed too…ambitious. How could she seriously consider what her life might be like in several years when she knew that it was so easy for things to turn on a dime? It took a concentrated effort, but she forced these thoughts out of her mind and made herself think about right now. Right now, she was at the beach, sitting by a fire that hadn't burned out yet. It still sparked when they touched it, though it had burned down to ashy embers.

She looked up at Derek and asked tenderly, "Should we go out to breakfast tomorrow?"

Derek smiled at her and softened. "If you want to. It's supposed to be nice, so I'm sure the Little Mermaid here is going to want to hit the beach again in the afternoon."

"We can do that," Meredith nodded agreeably. She looked down at Emily, still blissfully asleep, and shifted her in her arms just a bit. She touched her face just for an instant, lightly grazing her fingertips over Emily's slightly sunburned cheeks and down her tanned arms. "She's so happy. She loves it here."

"Thank you for coming," Derek said, before he paused and swallowed hard. "I know you didn't want to."

She shook her head. "You were right," she sighed. "We needed this."

"Even if you…even if _we_ hadn't," he corrected himself quickly, "…I always pictured us doing this anyway. Taking the kids to the beach like this."

"This summer?"

"Yeah. We'd take them down to the water. You'd dip the baby's feet in, and the baby would laugh because they'd be like Emily, but Emily would want me to take her in deeper. She'd jump waves and when she'd got tired, we'd take a nap on the beach. And you and I, we'd be so happy."

"I miss when we were happy," Meredith murmured.

"Some things are kind of how I always thought they would be," he continued, though Meredith's words painted a pained look across his face and she knew she hadn't gone unheard. "Taking Em swimming. Fishing. Sitting like this around the fire. Things that my Dad used to do with us."

Derek rarely talked about his father. He hadn't even told her how he died until after they were married. A brain aneurysm killed him in a matter of minutes when Derek was eleven years old, blindsiding the entire family and plunging them into a grief that Meredith still didn't fully comprehend. Her mother had died slow. And she was an adult when it happened. She knew it was coming. Derek lost the only man in his life when he was barely old enough to understand that he was never coming back. All she had ever learned of this period in Derek's life were brief snippets that he had shared with her over their nearly five years together.

"You really miss him," she whispered.

"More since Em was born than I have in a long time," Derek said noncommittally, staring into the fire with an abnormal, intense focus. "I want him to be here to tell me what to do."

"You don't need to be told," Meredith said as she tried to shoo the sentiment out of his mind before it rooted itself in too deep. "She loves you so much. She cries for you when you're not here."

"No…you," he said, and looked up at her almost desperately. "I lost you too. And I think that hurts more than the baby."

"I'm trying, Derek. I want us to be the way we were."

"We can be," he said. "Please let me back in."

"I want to. I'm trying. I'm finally feeling like me again, you know? It's like after the baby, I just made myself shut down. It was like everyone knew I didn't want this enough, not at first anyway…like I had it coming and everyone knew it but me. But when I started to wake up, you weren't there anymore."

"I know," he replied. "I will be better. I promise, Mer."

"I didn't want to go to the hospital that night. But that was the only thing that was going to make you believe it. I did it for you, and then the whole time I just felt like you couldn't even look at me. Like you were blaming me."

"No… Mer, I was just…so sick over it. It broke my heart. It was just taken away so fast and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was just gone. One minute, everything was fine, and the next…. You wouldn't even try."

"Derek, it wouldn't have helped. You have to understand that."

"I know, I know," he whispered. "I just didn't want to admit it to myself."

"Where were you that night?" she asked, speaking softly despite the hitch in her voice so as not to wake Emily up. "After, I mean."

"In the bathroom. Throwing up. Crying. I felt like I was going out of my mind, Mer."

"Yeah," she breathed. "I was too." She was silent then, and burrowed her toes into the sand. The waves lapped gently up on the sand, just feet away from them and their campfire. Staring out into the water and the sky, both of which looked so black, except for what little the fire illuminated, she was suddenly very aware of her heart beating. It felt very hard – not faster, just more deliberate – a firm, steady thump against her ribs. "Did you think that I didn't want the baby?" she asked delicately.

"No," he said, so immediately that she had barely gotten the question past her lips. "I knew you were scared at first. But while you were pregnant, I never doubted for a second that you wanted the baby."

She looked at him expectantly, and waited for him to continue. After a moment or two, more words came rushing out, so quickly that he didn't allow himself to think about them first. He simply poured them out, all the jagged shards of his heart going with them. "It was so easy for me to be happy about it. You were already so sick, and doing your residency, and…that night, when you wouldn't go…it was easier to think, even for just a second, that you were relieved. Not happy enough first, then not sad enough. I don't know. I was stupid. I tried to go to you. After a little while. But the door…you locked me out."

"Yeah," she whispered, and took her hands away from Emily for just a second to blot at her eyes. Suddenly, she felt very tired herself, like a year's worth of baggage was starting to catch up to her, and Derek was taking her down a road that she did not care to travel. "We should put her in her bed," she said abruptly. "The fire's almost out."

Derek nodded, and took one of Emily's buckets down to the water. He poured bucket after bucket on the fire, extinguishing the last little bit himself, and once he had made sure it was completely out, he reached down and scooped Emily into his arms. Even in her sleep, she molded herself into his embrace. His strong arms supported underneath and around her back, her head resting lightly on his shoulder and her hair tickling his neck.

"I'll take her up," he sighed. She followed him into the house, taking their two chairs and Emily's toys with her and leaving them on the porch for the next day. Her chest felt remarkably constricted, and she chalked it up to the smoke she'd been sitting around for the past several hours, but she knew that talking about things she'd buried deep within her for months had to be a contributing factor. She checked the clock and saw that it was nearing 10:00. She had thought it would be much later than that.

When she got back upstairs to Emily's room, she found her daughter lying in her bed with Derek perched on the edge of it, smoothing her hair back. She'd woken up, but was still groggy enough that she could be lulled back to sleep with just a few quiet words and maybe a back rub.

"Is it morning time?" Emily asked.

"No, it's still night time," Meredith said, leaning down to kiss her one last time.

"You need to go back to sleep and the next time you wake up, it will be morning."

"Ok," Emily mumbled.

"Goodnight, Em," Meredith said again, and took her baby monitor off the table next to the bed. She waved it in her hand for a moment, just to show Derek that she had it, and went back downstairs.

She padded barefoot across the living room and through the kitchen, sand clinging to the bottom of her pants. She could feel that the air had gotten colder, though she just hadn't noticed when she was basking in the heat of the fire. She took a sweatshirt out of the coat closet, and slipped it on over her head, and went out onto the porch.

Curled up in the upholstered chaise lounge on the porch, she stared out at the ocean. All she could really see was the moonlight reflecting off the ripples of the water, and the white froth of the surf as it spilled in, but she could hear the waves as they crashed onto shore, rolling rhythmically in and out. She clicked the baby monitor on, and set it down next to her on the chair. She could hear, a little staticky, but clear enough, Derek's soothing voice talking to Emily, trying to get her back to sleep.

"As soon as you wake up, it will be time to go to the beach again. The man on the news said it's going to be a beautiful, sunny day. Good waves tomorrow, Bean."

"I can use my board?" Meredith heard Emily ask. She could tell she was barely awake by the way each word was a deliberate effort and how she swallowed back a yawn in the middle.

"I think tomorrow is going to be even better than today. You can come wake Mommy and me up when it's light outside."

"And then we go to the ocean?"

"As long as you want," he promised.

"Cause we're on vacation?"

"Yeah, because we're on vacation."

"Daddy, you love me the best, right?"

Meredith smiled, easily able to picture her daughter, curled up in blankets and clutching Bear in one hand, looking up at Derek and asking him so earnestly. She had the vague sensation that she was eavesdropping on a private moment between father and daughter, but felt no guilt. There was so much that she felt like she did not know about Derek, so many months that she felt like she had not seen what her daughter saw in him.

"Of course I do," Derek said tenderly. "I'll see you in the morning, ok?" She heard him kiss her goodnight and pull her door closed behind him.

Meredith stayed where she was. He would find her soon enough. Suddenly, she felt exposed, like she had realized that she has just let Derek see her naked. Well, she was his wife. He was allowed to see her naked. And when he did, very nice things usually accompanied it. Though it had been awhile, it's not like she could forget that. She felt more than naked, like she'd let him see the innermost corners of her heart. There was nothing she could do about them; they were what they were, but it was up to him to finally understand her or not.

She felt tears prick at the back of her eyes and spill over a little, guilty and hot down her face. That baby was always going to be an ache in her heart, a small piece of unfulfilled possibility that she'd carry with her until she died. But there was something else.

" _I lost you too. And I think that hurts more than the baby."_

He was right. Over time, the loss of the baby had been bolstered, supplemented, by the pangs of guilt and sadness over the deterioration of her marriage, until it became impossible to tell exactly where her grief was coming from.

The screen door to the porch slid open, jarring her out of her thoughts. Derek stood in the doorway, watching her watch the water, and she shrugged helplessly at him. She could make herself stop running away, but she was his to catch.

He hesitated for a moment, like he had to stop to consider all his options. Meredith could at least admit to herself that she could be difficult to read sometimes. Though he paused briefly, it only seemed like a second or two before he pulled the door closed behind him and took a few tentative steps towards her.

Derek didn't say a word as he padded barefoot across the porch until he was next to her. He stood next to the chair for a minute and watched the ocean with her, following her gaze out to the nearly indistinguishable horizon. He pushed his hair off his face with one hand, and looked down at her. She wasn't crying, at least not loudly, but she wiped at her eyes a bit, and when she did, he crawled onto the chair beside her, throwing away in one gesture a year of avoidance and lost intimacy. His spooned her, his chest flush against her back, and smoothed his palms down her arms before wrapping them loosely around her. His hands found hers, slipping more easily than she thought into an old embrace, like they had just needed a bit of reminding, and it was in that moment that she realized how lonely she had become.

It was like she couldn't comprehend how fully he was gone until he was back. While he held her then, it all seemed quite easy when she boiled it back down to the basics. I am here. Derek is here. He is holding me. We are here together. We are still together. Derek knows. He understands.

She watched the water come in, and recede once, twice, three times. Some of it pooled in little holes left in the sand from earlier digging, but most rolled back, collecting in an endless sea that led to nowhere near. The moon bounced beams of starshine off the water, sending quiet light up the trail of footprints they had left on the sand and onto the porch.

Soon enough, the moon would be replaced by the sun, creeping up pink and orange on the other side of the house. And when the light shined in their bedroom window the next morning, it would reveal the two of them in the same way that it was in that moment.

Derek, with his arms wrapped tightly around her, not giving up on her yet. Meredith, holding his hands, still, letting him catch her.

When the new day began, they'd both be sleeping more soundly than they had in months.

It was a start.


	9. Don't lose your faith in me

_Don't lose your faith in me  
And I will try not to lose faith in you  
Don't put your trust in walls  
Cause walls will only crush you when they fall  
Be here now, here now_

* * *

Meredith had almost forgotten what her cell phone ringtone sounded like. It had been so long since she'd heard the simple, cheerful trills of a few repeated electronic notes that it took her a moment to register that someone was calling her. Somehow over the past six weeks, she'd grown accustomed to it being just the three of them, and sometimes forgot that there was an outside world that her friends and her job and the rest of her life were still very much a part of.

She momentarily abandoned her project of packing a picnic lunch and fumbled through her purse, looking for the phone, and by the time she found it, it was already halfway through its second cycle of ringing. The name 'Cristina' flashed across the cover screen and Meredith suddenly realized that so much time had passed since they'd last spoken. She'd told her not to call, that she would if she needed her, and so far, she hadn't. Called.

"Congratulate me," Cristina said after a quick hello, like no time had passed at all.

She positioned the phone between her cheek and shoulder, holding it in place with her chin while she went back to layering turkey and cheese on three slices of bread. "Congratulations. What did you do?"

"You're speaking to your new official superior. If you ever decide to come home."

"You got chief resident?" Meredith asked.

"You're surprised?"

"No," she replied immediately. "I just forgot that was coming up."

"Mer, it already happened. Two weeks ago. I figured you'd call me to see which one of us kicked Olitzer's ass."

"Two weeks ago?" How had the date that would have defined her professional career up to this point come and gone without her even noticing?

"Yeah, Mer. July first," she said, like she could barely believe it didn't register immediately in Meredith's mind. "Mer, you should have seen it. They post the announcement and Olitzer's in surgery doing his 80th rotator cuff of the week, and when he comes out, he thinks he's got it. So he's strutting around, and he turns the corner and sees me shaking hands with the Chief. It was. So. Great."

"That does sound pretty great," Meredith replied, with a slight, halfhearted chuckle.

"You really are just in your own little world out there, aren't you?" Cristina asked.

"Yeah, I guess so. Kind of," Meredith realized aloud. "So how is it calling the shots?"

"Oh, I'm totally drunk with power. Olitzer is literally hiding from me as we speak."

"So things are going well," Meredith smiled.

"Oh yeah, you know what? You get tough with people and you get a lot of things done. It's amazing. How you managed to deal with Bowman for a year though, I'll never know. The man is a complete idiot."

"He's not that bad," she chuckled.

"Well he's not an intern anymore, so he's developed a bit of an ego."

"Says the one who has her colleagues cowering in fear."

"I put in my time," Cristina said defensively. "Besides, Izzie, George, and Alex aren't cowering. Well, George kind of is, but other than that, it's been fine. Bowman is just a man-child. He's a man-child with a scalpel."

"Yeah, I guess he is."

"Meredith, the rest of residency is smooth sailing."

"For you, it is," she replied. She spread some mustard on three more pieces of bread and sloppily flipped them on top of the other slices. A bit of mustard splattered on the counter, and she dabbed at it with a paper towel before slipping the sandwiches into plastic bags.

"Well for you, it will be too."

"I'm not chief resident."

"Yes, but your best friend is."

"Are you telling me you're willing to give me special treatment?"

"Everything has its price, Meredith."

"Oh, so I have to buy you off?"

"Chief resident comes with a big headache, not a big pay raise."

"And yet it's worth it to you," Meredith prodded playfully.

"You're damn right. So will you ever be coming home?" Cristina asked.

Meredith cut an apple into slices, and dumped those in another plastic bag.

She was happy to see that Cristina was still Cristina, so complicated and yet so refreshingly not that way at all. Cristina worked hard for something, and it came to pass. She was rewarded. Meredith thought that was probably what Cristina liked about medicine in the first place – you could know the answers. They were right there in the book to be studied and memorized, and if you followed proper procedure, complications were much less likely to arise. Like Cristina, this was something that Meredith found easy to do. The problems came when you moved away from the realms of science and academia and medicine, and let yourself get invested in matters of the heart. Then it became complicated, and the answers were much less concrete. Maybe that's why Cristina preferred to stick to hearts made of muscle and sinew, tucked away in the same location behind every single human being's ribs.

Meredith finished packing the lunch, and just stood at the kitchen counter, talking to her best friend. She stared out the kitchen window, the one with the slightly chipped paint and the plastic cup of dandelions on the sill, at the ocean as it rolled in, while she held in her hand the connection to the old life that felt at the same time both distant and familiar. She felt stretched, like she was straddled between two worlds.

"After Emily's birthday, I think," she finally replied, "The Chief was ok with giving us time off until Labor Day weekend, and we have the house until then."

"Basically, you don't know."

"Basically. I actually kinda like it here. It's nice."

"But you are coming back, right? Don't tell me you've abandoned surgery to go live on the beach and drink things out of coconuts with straws."

"I don't think I've actually seen a single coconut since we've been here, but I'll try to keep that to a minimum."

"What have you been doing then? How do you fill up that much time? No surgery for three months? I'd slice my leg open just to give myself something to suture."

"Just mostly beach stuff," Meredith replied with an appreciative laugh. "Derek is fishing with Emily right now. I'm supposed to go meet them with lunch in a minute. Yesterday, we read the paper in bed and then went shopping in town. And I don't think I've slept this much since I was Em's age."

"And you like this?"

"I didn't think I would. But Emily loves it, and Derek has…I don't think I've ever seen Derek like this."

"Like what?" Cristina asked. "You've seen Shepherd pretty much every way there is to see him. No, you know what, I don't even want to know."

"No," Meredith laughed. "Not like that. He has this whole rugged surfer side of him that I never knew about."

"What, like child of the ocean?"

"Yeah. It's actually really sexy. Like I notice his arms a lot now. He's got these really strong shoulders and his biceps are like…."

"Meredith," Cristina interrupted. "No." She changed the subject. "How's Em?"

"She loves it here. She's been in the water almost every day jumping waves and boogie boarding. Derek taught her. It's like she's not afraid of anything," she said proudly. She hesitated before she asked, "How come you haven't called sooner?"

"You told me not to," Cristina reminded. "You said you'd call if you needed to."

"Oh," Meredith sighed. "That's right."

"Have you needed to?"

She needed her those first few weeks, when she and Derek danced around each other, close-lipped. But since then, things had slowly started to improve. She missed Cristina, and she missed the hospital, but she was not desperate for them. She did not feel utterly lost here, alone with her husband and daughter. She no longer needed the hospital to serve as a distraction for all the things she did not want to face. She actually felt almost…comfortable.

"How is Project Fix Our Marriage working out?" Cristina pressed.

Meredith paused. She was learning him all over again, studying him like they had just met. She likened their situation to how couples on their first few tentative dates behaved towards each other, in a way—timid, reserved, overly conceding—tiptoeing around each other like they were trying to do their best not to offend, to see if it was worth going to the next level. Of course, this was all based on imagination, since her first something serious had been Derek, and they'd bloomed from one too many tequila shots and an illicit one night stand. Derek had never been hesitant with her, and she'd been at least as open as she'd ever been. But they were both timid now, trying as hard as they ever had to make the other one understand that they still wanted this.

She felt like she had almost made her peace with the baby, like she was finally allowing herself to stop grieving over what was not to be. Sometimes, when she really stopped to think about it, which was actually quite often lately, she realized that she let the baby go months ago. She understood now that what she was really missing, what she was really grieving over so bitterly, was partly the loss of the baby, but it was mostly the loss of Derek, and the intimacy in her marriage—which had come so close on the heels of the miscarriage that she hadn't seen it slither in at the time. She felt this most acutely when Derek hugged her, or crawled into bed flush next to her after reading, or poured her coffee for her in the morning. It was only in the little things that he had started to do again that she understood the enormity of what they had allowed themselves to lose.

Now she understood what this was about, why Derek had been so adamant about coming here, and why he had literally begged her. They had wanted that baby. They'd cried, and laughed, and agonized, and suffered over it, but in the end, if they were ever going to move forward, they had to make their peace with the fact that it was irretrievably lost.

This trip, a retreat back to simplicity, wasn't about that, and it took Meredith this long to realize it never had been. This was about taking back what could be taken back.

"Meredith?" Cristina jarred her out of her thoughts.

"Um," Meredith stumbled over the words that were sorting themselves out in her head. "We've been talking about some stuff. We're doing better. I don't know, it's hard to explain, Cristina. It's a lot."

"You're gone six weeks and all you can say is you're doing better?" Cristina asked indignantly. "Well, at least you can have all the sex you want. You've got the time. That has to help with the reconnection process."

"Actually, we haven't quite gotten there…we haven't done…we're not _that_ much better yet."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No, but it's not really about that though."

"Of course it's about that," Cristina cried. "It's about the connection crap or whatever. Isn't that what you told me you were trying to do? Reconnect? Plus, come on, it's you and Shepherd…. Dirty, dirty sex is like your thing."

"That makes me feel great," Meredith said sarcastically. "By the way, I hope you have some semblance of privacy wherever you are. I don't need the whole hospital thinking that the Chief let us take leaves of absence to we could go on some wild sex romp."

"I'm not going to lie to you, I thought that would be a big part of it," Cristina said.

"Well, it hasn't been," Meredith countered.

"It begs the question then—what are you waiting for? Reconnect and come home. Pastern is saying I'm like the new Bailey. I think they're conspiring to create a new secret nickname for me. It's great. I'm finally getting paid to be a hard-ass."

"It's just not…" Meredith began, but she dropped it as soon as she started it. "I still…. You know what, nevermind. We'll be home in a few weeks."

"What, Mer?" Cristina asked, growing serious.

"It's stupid. It's nothing," she replied, audibly flustered. "Congratulations on Chief Resident, Cristina. That's great. Really, really great," she said with as much sincerity in her voice as she could dig up. "I actually have to go, but I'll call you. Sooner this time. We'll be home soon."

"Meredith."

"I have to feed Emily. She hasn't had lunch yet. Cristina, I'm fine. Seriously."

"Ok," Cristina sighed.

"I'll see you soon," Meredith assured her, and hung up the phone.

She gathered up the food, dropping the sandwiches and fruit along with a few water bottles into a larger bag stuffed with towels and sunscreen, and padded on to the back porch, pulling the door closed behind her. She set off down the beach to the jetty, where Derek had told her they would be.

The slick black rocks of the jetty jutted out at odd angles, and she had to climb about eight feet to get to the top, but once she navigated her way up there, it became a much smoother path, despite some deep rivulets between the rocks. The past several days had been filled with sunshine, and that day was the first overcast one that they had had in awhile. That, combined with the fact that the air got incrementally cooler the further she went out, made her thankful that Derek had suggested that she wear a long-sleeved t-shirt.

The jetty extended as a solid rock formation for nearly 30feet in front of her. It was about 15 feet wide, and as she kept walking and the waves rolled against the sides of it, she had the strange sensation that she was almost walking on water. From her vantage point, the jetty looked like it was stabbing the horizon like a knife, like when the sun began to set later that night, she could walk right out to meet it. At the end of path, she could see Derek and Emily together, so distinctly recognizable even by the backs of their heads. Emily was situated in the exact middle of the jetty, like Derek had planned it that way so that the jetty itself formed a natural barrier between her and the water. She was playing with something that Meredith couldn't make out yet. Her pink hooded sweatshirt hid her curly hair from Meredith's view, but Derek's shock of wavy black hair was unmistakable. Derek, wearing shorts and a long-sleeved gray t-shirt that almost matched the sky, stood at the end of it, almost past where the path itself stopped and the jagged rocks began. His rod was cast into the ocean, and he was simply standing there patiently, waiting for something to happen.

She had always known that Derek loved to fish, but she had never quite understood why. Derek was the kind of man that liked to take control, who liked to do things and say things and be things, and fishing, though she had never really tried it, seemed like it was about the exact opposite. Fishing involved a lot of waiting, seeing what the current was going to bring you. It was about letting the fish come to you, and the impossibility of actually going to get the fish yourself. Derek had tried to explain that when he got a bite, it was hardly inactive, and it took the right kind of skill to reel a fish in, but Meredith still didn't quite understand how a few moments of action would be enough to satisfy an always-voracious man like Derek. Since they arrived here, and Meredith had gone with him to watch him fish several times, she was starting to understand a little more. Maybe this was his escape, the one time where he didn't have to be in control, because no one expected it from him. The situation did not allow for him to take control, so it was ok to just let it be. Derek didn't have to be anything, or do anything. He just had to be there.

When she reached the end, she set her bag down on the ground, and went to Derek first. He turned a little when she touched his side, and one arm curled around her waist while the other kept a firm, steady grip on his rod and his eyes stared out at the water. With one hand on his stomach, and the other around his back, she rested her head on his shoulder. The whole embrace lasted about ten seconds before she pulled away and he turned to fully face her.

"Hi, Mommy," Emily exclaimed, looking up from her toys, which Meredith could now clearly see were a few spongy fish-shaped stuffed animals. Her own miniature fishing pole was propped up on the other side of Derek, though the line was still in the water. Emily had probably gotten bored holding it and decided to move on to something else.

"Hi, Em," she said brightly.

"Where were you?" Derek asked. He hadn't shaved in a day or two, and the stubble that had grown in since then contributed to the fisherman image.

"I'm sorry," Meredith said. "Cristina called and was talking about," she hesitated, "Things. And I got held up."

"Cristina called? Is everything ok?"

"Yeah, everything's fine. She just wanted to tell me that she got Chief Resident."

"It's the middle of July, that should have been decided weeks ago," Derek mused.

"It was, but when I didn't call, she just decided to…I mean, I guess she got tired of waiting to tell me. She was pretty happy about it. She figured I would have called, but then I didn't, so…."

"You haven't talked to her at all since we've been here?"

"No," Meredith replied. "Just me, you, and Em." Come to think of it, she hadn't seen Derek take a phone call either. Occasionally, his cell phone rang, and sometimes he'd talk for a minute or two, but most of the time he would inspect the caller ID, and then disconnect the call. He'd taken steps to isolate them from all distractions, and without even really realizing it, she had done the same.

"How is everything at the hospital?" Derek asked.

"She's loving the job. When she called, she said Olitzer was hiding from her, and Bowman was, I believe she used the phrase, 'cowering in fear.'"

"I can't say I blame them. If I were a resident, I'd be hiding from Cristina too," Derek laughed. "Bowman is an idiot though."

"That's what she said," Meredith said amusedly. "Olitzer is just licking his wounds. He'll be fine. I think he was the only one in the hospital who thought he actually had a shot. Everyone knew Cristina was a lock."

"Cristina is good," Derek agreed. "Why didn't you call her sooner?"

"I guess I just wasn't thinking about it," Meredith admitted. "And I guess Cristina thought that maybe I would be jealous or something, so she didn't call. It kind of sounded that way."

"Are you?"

"No, not really," she replied. "I mean, of course it'd be a big honor and probably kind of fun in a way, but I'm not jealous. I wasn't expecting to get it."

"Well, it's not because you're not good at what you do. You're just as good as Cristina."

"I basically took myself out of it when I decided to come here. The Chief wasn't going to choose me." She shrugged noncommittally and turned to Emily. "Em, are you ready for lunch?"

Emily looked up from her toys; she was making the fish swim by moving them through the air with her hands, up and down, back and forth.

"I guess I eat now," she said.

"You guess you'll eat now?" Meredith asked amusedly as she sat on the ground and unpacked the bag. She passed a sandwich up to Derek, and Emily scooched to sit next to her. She opened her mouth and Meredith offered her an apple slice. She took a satisfying bite, and chewed and talked at the same time.

"Mommy, these my fish," she said, holding up the two stuffed animals she still had in her hands.

"They are? Where did you get those?" Meredith asked. She waited for Emily to swallow before she unwrapped the sandwich, broke off a bite-sized piece with her fingers, and held it out to her.

"I get them at the," she took a bite of the sandwich, "I get them at that place with the whirly whirl."

Meredith smiled, remembering Emily's amazement the week before at what she had to admit was a pretty impressive gumball machine in front of the toy store.

"And did Daddy buy them for you?"

"Yup," Emily nodded, slowly but surely making her way through the sandwich as Meredith talked to her.

"Do they have names, Em?" Derek asked.

While Emily pondered the question, Meredith took the opportunity to get another bite of apple in her. Emily chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and took another bite before she finally answered. Some flecks of apple came out of her mouth as she announced, "Daddy and Mommy."

"What, Em?" Meredith asked.

"That their names," Emily declared. "That one Daddy," she said, holding up the blue fish with green spots, "And that one Mommy," she said, raising her other hand, which held a pink fish with a few purple stripes. They were nothing one might expect to find in the wild, but Emily seemed interested enough in them as things to play with.

"Those are good names," Derek grinned, swallowing a bite of his own sandwich.

"Why is that one Mommy and the other one Daddy?" Meredith asked.

Emily held up the blue fish. "This one is Daddy cause he the stwongest." She switched to the red fish, "And that one is Mommy cause she the pwettiest. That a princess fishie."

"Is Mommy a princess?" Derek asked.

Emily took another bite of her sandwich, and shrugged, her hands up in the air. "I sink so but I not know," she said with her mouth full.

"Well, what about the Daddy fish?" Meredith offered. "Is he a princess?"

"No," Emily laughed gleefully.

"Why not?"

"Daddy is a boy!" she cried.

"Oh, so only girls can be princesses?" Derek asked. He crumpled his plastic bag in one hand.

"Yeah, only girls," Emily said decidedly.

"Are you a princess?"

Emily scrunched her shoulders and wrinkled her nose. With a wry, slightly devilish smile, she said, "Yes."

"I see," Meredith said. Her voice was as light with amusement. "So what are Mommy and Daddy Fish doing today?"

"They swimmin' in the ocean."

"Do they like the water?"

"Yeah, cause it's cold and they can swim in there," Emily replied, and she moved the fish in her hands through the air a little bit. "See?"

"Oh, ok," Meredith smiled.

"Who is the best swimmer?" Derek asked. "Mommy or Daddy Fish?"

Emily paused, and took a big bite of her food while she considered the question. "Daddy is the best swimmer."

"Why?" he asked, but he was clearly even just the slightest bit proud that Emily had said that.

"Cause the Mommy sinks that ocean is so chilly."

Meredith couldn't resist. Sometimes she and Derek just questioned Emily endlessly, just because they found her so interesting and startlingly smart and funny, that they just wanted to see what she would say.

"Does it ever get too cold?"

Emily shrugged, and tilted her head to the side and thought about it. "Sometimes."

"What happens when that happens?" Meredith asked, now actually genuinely curious as to what Emily would say.

"The Daddy Fish helps the Mommy Fish swim cause he is the stwongest."

"Does the Daddy ever get tired of swimming?" Derek asked.

"No," Emily said decidedly.

"Why not?"

"Cause he got these dots," Emily said, motioning to the green polka dots on the toy. "And they go _woosh_." She swung her arms in a half circle, swinging the fish with her. "See?"

"You're right, it's just like _woosh,_ " Meredith laughed. "What does the Mommy Fish do?"

"She makes the Daddy happy," Emily said. "Happy, happy, happy," she cried, her voice lifting with the last word. She paused for a moment, and looked at first Meredith, then Derek. "I sink I done my lunch."

"One more bite," Meredith insisted. There was only a little left of Emily's half of the sandwich, and after she took one last big, chomping bite, Meredith started on the other half for herself. "Ok, you can be done."

"Daddy, I can hold this now," Emily said. She grabbed her fishing rod and stood next to Derek.

"Ok, remember what we talked about?"

"I stay so still," Emily nodded.

"Yes, and I don't want you to walk around too much because it's slippery."

"Ok," Emily agreed seriously.

While Meredith finished her lunch, the second half of Emily's sandwich and just a few bites out of her own, she watched Emily and Derek fish. She was still seated on the hard rock floor of the jetty behind both of them, and they faced away from her, out towards the horizon. Derek held his rod in his right hand, and rested his left on top of Emily's head. He stayed incredibly still, moving only occasionally to recast his line. Meredith stood up when she was done eating, and positioned herself on the other side of Derek.

At first, she didn't speak, feeling like if she did, she would interrupt something inexplicable as the three of them stared aimlessly out at the endless ocean. But after awhile, when neither Derek nor Emily had caught anything, she couldn't be silent any longer.

"Is it supposed to take this long?" she asked quietly. She didn't look at Derek when she said it, and her voice came out disjointed and distant as she spoke. As the words left her lips, she realized that she'd wanted to ask this very question for so long, that it had flitted through her thoughts so many times in one form or another, yet had never been articulated.

"What?"

"Fishing," Meredith supplied after a silence that was probably barely noticeable, yet felt unbearably long to her. "Shouldn't you have caught one by now?"

"Patience." Derek watched the water. "Sometimes it takes awhile. But today is pretty slow. Slower than I thought it would be."

"Oh," was all she could think to say, and they sunk back into a sudden stillness that wasn't uncomfortable, yet not altogether easy either. Meredith was very aware that Derek was not touching her.

Emily started to hum a song to herself, nothing Meredith or Derek recognized, just a jumble of nonsense words and syllables tumbling out blissful and fast. Meredith wished that she had thought to bring a book or something, because Derek seemed content to just stand there, immersed in his own thoughts. He didn't mind if she was there, but she was pretty sure that it wouldn't bother him if she wasn't. He was ok with the quiet, ok with just letting the moment fill him and take him away. Maybe Derek's thoughts were a safer place to be than hers were.

"I was thinking," she cut the silence again like a beam of light through a thick fog, "When we get back, what do you think about getting a dog?"

"A dog?"

"Yeah, I think it would be good for her. You had a dog growing up, didn't you?"

"First Parker, then Sam," Derek said. "They were both big dogs though, Mer. Labs. Do you think we can take care of a dog right now?"

"We had Doc when I was an intern. Well, you had Doc, in that trailer no less."

"That's true," Derek conceded.

As Derek considered her proposition, she thought about why she wanted this for Emily. The few hours after school sometimes seemed unbearably daunting when it was just you and the babysitter. There was something to be said, she thought, for having a companion. There was something to be said for someone to share sandwiches with, to play in the snow with, to cuddle with in the middle of the night. And though Meredith demanded more from herself than what her own mother had ever given her, there was no way that she could fill every single instant of her daughter's life by herself. All of her reasons swirled around in her head, long white filaments of thought twisting and turning, and forcing themselves out in one hesitant breath.

"I don't want Emily to grow up alone," she supplied.

"Oh." Derek looked away, first at Emily and then out at the ocean, and focused intently on his fishing line, slack and dangling into the water.

She studied him, the way the expression on his face became ever so slightly wistful, like he was trying to hold something in. He adjusted his line a little, reeling in just a few inches or so for no particular reason except to give his hands something to do.

Her voice was softer than it normally was, because she didn't want Emily to overhear their conversation, but she raised her voice just slightly when she said, "I just think it would be good for her to have someone to play with."

"It would be good for her."

He watched her, until his gaze became almost uncomfortably penetrative. He didn't look angry, just wounded, like she was actively reaching into his chest and squeezing his beating heart. He opened his mouth just once, as if he was about to say something, but quickly swallowed whatever it was back and returned to fiddling with his rod.

"I guess we can get a dog," he finally said, except it sounded more like a surrender than anything else.

"Should we get a puppy, or should we get an older dog, so we don't have to housebreak it or whatever?"

"It doesn't matter," he said. "Bean, turn your reel a little bit. Wind it up," he instructed. Emily twisted her rod a just slightly. "There you go."

The silence returned with a vengeance, planting itself firmly between the two of them for a solid five minutes. Meredith shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, standing awkwardly beside Derek and transferring her gaze from him to her, then back to her again. Emily was walking back and forth, just a few paces to the left and then to the right, dragging her pole behind her. Even Meredith knew that she'd never catch anything if she didn't stay still, but Derek didn't say a word to her.

"What?" Meredith asked, even though she was pretty sure she already knew.

"You're never going to want to have another baby, are you?" he asked. There it was.

"Derek…."

"Meredith, I'd rather you just tell me so I can stop hoping, if that's how it's going to be."

"I can't," she finally said.

"You can't?"

"I don't want to," she said defensively.

When his voice softened, he surprised even himself when he asked her tenderly, "Are you scared?"

"No," she said as quickly as she could, to stop an accidental yes from bubbling out as something she didn't care to share with him yet.

"Why, Meredith?"

"I just…" she trailed off.

Emily had propped her pole back on the makeshift stand Derek had made for it and had her stuffed fish in her hands again. She paced around a few times in the same circular path around the jetty, stopping only to hastily push the sleeves of her sweatshirt up when they slid down to cover her hands. She twirled once more, and her hood slipped off, revealing a full head of curly blonde locks, made more voluminous by the salty, moist sea air. When she realized that this happened, she stopped and shrugged her shoulders, then shot a dazzling smile up at Meredith. She plopped down on the ground, toys in hand, and she continued to play with them. She swam them back and forth through the imaginary waves in the air, and added some high-pitched squeaks and squeals as fish-appropriate sound effects, laughing at her own brilliance.

"Isn't she enough?" Meredith asked.

"Of course she is," Derek said. "Meredith."

"Derek."

"You just said you didn't want her to grow up alone," he reasoned.

"I don't."

"Well…."

"You really need another one?" Meredith asked.

"Don't you still wonder?" he asked desperately, without answering her question.

"Yeah, sometimes, but what good does that do?" she shot back.

"Exactly," he cried. "What good does wondering do?"

"I guess it doesn't," she retorted.

Wondering didn't do any good. The past year had been evidence enough of that. So what if there was an ache inside when she thought about the startling difference between what she had and what she wanted? It was there, but it gave her nothing to go on. Picturing the baby's would-be piercing blue eyes didn't make them real. Wondering when she would, or if she could ever, know that Derek still loved her didn't make it come true. She'd wasted so much time pushing reality away, and now she realized that it was imperative that she stare it in the face, if only just this once.

"So what are you saying?" she posed the question. "If I don't want to have another baby, that's it?"

"That's not what I'm saying."

"What are you saying then?" she asked, calm only for the fact that Emily, though distracted, was well within earshot.

"You won't be honest with me."

"You won't be honest with me either."

"I'm telling you right now what I want," he said, setting his pole down for the first time and facing her point to point.

"You're telling me that you won't divorce me over this. But how do I know you're not going to just resent me for it?"

"I don't know," he admitted. His expression may have been soft, but she could see the fierceness in his eyes. "Why, Meredith? You were happy, weren't you?"

"Yeah, I was," she said softly.

"Do you think it's going to happen again?"

"I don't want to find out the hard way," she admitted.

"Meredith, you know that plenty of women have gone on to have healthy babies after. You know that."

"I don't know what you want me to say," she sighed. "I can't promise you this, Derek."

"Think about it," he urged.

"I can't promise you, Derek. I don't…."

He cut her off. "Think about it." She started to say something else, but he was right there. "Please."

They left the jetty not long after, navigating their way down the rocky barriers to the smooth sand. Much to Derek's disappointment, neither Emily nor Derek had caught any fish. They hadn't even had one bite.

Their flip flops left distinct footprints in the moist sand, trailing zigzag lines behind them as they headed south. Meredith and Derek each had one hand firmly clasped in Emily's, and on the way back the house, she remained firmly fixed in the middle. More than once, she shrieked and sprinted ahead, lifting her legs and swinging them, letting Meredith and Derek bear her weight.

It wasn't a very long walk back to the house. They made it there in eight minutes. Before a string of drenching afternoon showers rolled in and settled.

Emily pulled them forward.


	10. I'm sorry long days came

_There are times I'll admit  
The seams of a life are tearing a bit  
But that's all relative  
When all that you know sums up to this  
I'm sorry long days came  
I'm sorry you're not quite the same  
I'll take all my reasons home again  
You'll have a reason, I'm giving you reasons_

* * *

Warnings of strong rip currents and a storm out to sea kept them out of the ocean that day. Weather officials had advised cautious swimming, if any at all, and with an adventurous toddler who had recently taken to pushing her limits, Derek and Meredith had decided no swimming at all would be easier.

During the week, the town was quieter. The beach drastically emptied as people went home to pull their nine-to-fives Monday through Friday. Derek wasn't sure if it was the cloudy sky, or the fact that it was barely after nine in the morning, or the fact that it was a Wednesday, but as they walked along the beach, they were for the most part the only ones there. Occasionally a jogger dashed by, or an elderly couple walked past them arm in arm, but that was it. He kind of liked it this way, just the three of them.

Emily trotted ahead of them by just a few feet, not out of sight, but, if they kept their voices low, out of earshot. They hadn't even dressed her for swimming, in the hope that she would understand that clothes that were not supposed to get wet should stay away from water. She looked like a small version of Meredith, wearing long shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. The only difference was that Meredith had tied her hair back in a ponytail, and let Emily's curly hair stay loose around her face.

The waves pounded the shoreline and billowed and crashed in, like they were unwelcome guests at a party. They walked awhile before he reached for her hand, nervously like a teenager, not like the man who had been married to her for over three years. Her taking it made him feel strangely more successful than anything he'd done in months.

"Hey," Meredith said, barely a few paces from the house. "I think we should do something special for Emily's birthday."

"What were you thinking?"

"I don't know. What do people normally do for little kid birthday parties?"

"I don't know," Derek shrugged. "I think anything with a high sugar intake is probably considered successful. We can have a cake, and we'll do presents, and hopefully it'll be nice weather that day and we'll go swimming."

"How are we going to get the presents without her seeing them?"

"Can't we just take her to the toy store and she can pick out what she wants?"

"No!" Meredith exclaimed. "She should be surprised. She has to do the whole unwrapping thing, with the ribbon and the ugly paper with balloons on it. There should be balloons."

"You hate that stuff."

"Yeah," she agreed. "But I think Emily should have it. Everybody should have it at least once in their life."

"They should."

"I just think…I just want her to have something special. She should have a birthday party. With a cake, and presents, and pin the tail on the whatever."

"Ok, but I have a specific requirement about the cake," Derek said. "No chocolate cake."

Meredith frowned. "Chocolate's the best kind of cake," she said matter-of-factly.

"It was until I threw it up all over my backyard at my 8th birthday party."

Meredith wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"And then everyone in the third grade made fun of me."

"Aww, you were that kid," she teased.

"I was that kid," he said. "Or at least I was that kid until Mark punched Steve Fisher in the face in front of the entire class for making fun of me." He grimaced and swallowed hard, like he still couldn't quite forget the taste. "So I guess Em can have whatever kind of cake she wants, but there's going to be a lot left over if it's chocolate."

"There won't be _that_ much."

"Well, since it's just going to be the three of us," Derek said.

Meredith was immediately defensive. "What does that mean?"

"I'm asking you if you and Emily are going to eat an entire cake by yourselves," he escalated slightly, getting defensive himself.

"Well, I was thinking that we'd do something for her here on her actual birthday, and then she could have a party when we got back. And there would be more people at that one."

"And who would be coming to this party?"

"Whoever Emily wants," Meredith shrugged.

"She'll be three. I don't think she'll come up with a huge list of people."

"Our friends, then. Her friends from daycare. Who's that little girl she always talks about? Anna? No, Ashley."

"Ok, so the Seattle Grace surgical floor, and a couple of kids from daycare."

"Yeah, maybe like ten?" she suggested.

"I was thinking more like five. You have no idea what ten three-year-olds would be like. Especially with all that sugar."

"I want her to have fun. A birthday is special, and last year wasn't…I wasn't up to seeing people, and she should have had something more than a brownie from the hospital cafeteria with a candle in it."

"Mer, we got her presents. Remember, she got that set of plastic food and some books and I think that's what the tricycle was from too."

"You got her presents. I watched her open them and went back to bed."

"Meredith, you were…you weren't you then."

She shook her head. "Emily should have had a celebration. She should have had a cake with the flowers made out of icing. And hats. You know the pointy hats?"

"Yeah."

"I think we should get some of those. Even though those freakin' strings hurt when you pull on them and they snap up. But they're pretty birthday-y, right?"

"That's about as festive as it gets."

"What about games and stuff? Do you know any of those stupid little games?" she asked, almost anxiously.

"Pin the tail on the donkey is about all I have."

"Should we get her a piñata?"

"I think she might be a little too young for that. I don't know how much I like the idea of our toddler blindfolded and swinging a baseball bat."

"Well, everyone could do that one."

"You know what, if you can get Cristina Yang to play piñata, I am all for this idea. But, Mer, I think she would seriously be happy just with the attention and the presents. It doesn't have to be—"

"Derek. Did you have birthday parties growing up? Like other ones where you didn't throw up and you had fun?"

"Well, yes, but…."

"Then Emily should have that. Your mom did that for you. I should do that for her."

"Ok," he agreed softly. "We'll do whatever you want."

"I was thinking…well, I was reading this toy store ad that came with the paper yesterday. I circled all these things that might be good, you know? It's hard to know what to get her because she's at this age and she's not really a baby anymore, but she's still little and…well, there was this baseball thing, like you can put the ball on this pole— "

"A tee," Derek supplied.

"Yeah! Yeah, a tee. So I was thinking that might be good. It's supposed to be for boys, I think, so they can practice hitting, but you like baseball. Well, you're a guy. But she can play with boy things, right? You know, feminism."

"She would love that."

"I think she would. And there's this set of doctor tools. I think it has a little plastic stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, things like that. It comes in a bag, and nobody has carried their medical supplies in a bag since 1873, but Emily would carry it around, don't you think?"

"I think she would. I also think she'd eventually want to know why it didn't come with a scalpel. I keep imagining the day when I will come home to find her in her room, cutting her stuffed animals open with a pair of scissors or something."

"I could see it," Meredith grinned proudly.

"Was there anything else you wanted to get her?"

"I was thinking something crafty. I want her holding smaller objects. She should be developing her fine motor skills."

"She's got plenty of crayons and paints and things like that. Is that what you were thinking?"

"No. Well, that, but they have these markers that apparently don't write anywhere except on this special paper that goes with it, so I was thinking maybe that?"

"So she wouldn't be able to color all over our kitchen counters?"

"Unless this paper they sell with it is made of granite, no."

"That's excellent. Add that to the list."

"And then maybe just a few new books. Like three? We should probably keep the bedtime stories somewhat fresh, you know?"

"For our sake if not hers," Derek agreed.

"I want you to pick those out, though. You have all those books that you used to read with you're your dad, so you should pick. Em," she interjected suddenly and much more loudly.

Emily squatted down, intensely focused on scooping the white froth of the water up with two hands and then letting it spill out through the cracks in her fingers. With the way she was positioned, it would have been easy for a wave to rush in and knock her down. It wouldn't even have to be a particularly big one. When she heard her name, she looked up sharply, back at Meredith.

"Did I say you could go in the ocean?" Meredith asked sternly.

Emily nodded, and went back to the difficult task of trying to pick up water with her hands.

"Emily," Meredith tried again. "I said you were _not_ allowed to go in the ocean today. Remember? Come out now, please."

"I go in there, Mommy," Emily pleaded.

"No. Daddy and I said no, because the water is very strong today, remember? Maybe tomorrow you can go swimming, but not today."

Emily slunk out and focused her attention back on the sand. She barely walked a few more paces before she plopped down and started digging a hole with her hands, the way Derek had shown her.

"Em, you want to make a castle?" Derek asked.

She nodded. "Daddy, you can help me do it?"

"I will in one minute," Derek promised. "You start it. I'll be right there."

He and Meredith took a seat a little further back, on sand where the tide hadn't crept up and soaked yet. He felt comfortable inching closer to her now, and when he rested his hand on her knee, he didn't feel out of place. They watched Emily start to dig, and begin to form piles of sand around the hole. Well, Meredith watched Emily and Derek watched Meredith.

"Were you lonely growing up?" he asked.

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she stared straight ahead with her eyes focused on Emily. He barely caught it when she responded. The nod was barely a cock of the head, but it was there. It was definitely there.

"She's not going to be lonely, Meredith," Derek tried. Except maybe she would be. Maybe there would be times where she felt empty. But right now, no. Now, Emily was two years old and she was happy.

Derek eased himself forward and almost up, but before he could get to his feet and go to Emily, Meredith stopped him in his tracks.

"Do you ever worry…just _all_ the time that you're not doing enough for her?" she asked timidly, her gaze still fixed on Emily.

He frowned. She worried all the time?

He worried about Emily every day since he knew she existed. He worried when she picked at her food that she wasn't eating enough. He worried about whether she would ever be potty trained. Even though he was a neurosurgeon, he worried when she had a cold about how much Tylenol to give her. But he didn't worry that she didn't know she was loved. He didn't worry that she felt neglected. The thought that he might not be enough for her had never crossed his mind. He just didn't think about things like that. But Meredith did.

He sank back down on to the sand next to Meredith and waited. She dragged an index finger through the sand, and wiped the grains that stuck to her off on her pants. She sighed, and made eye contact with him for a second before she looked down again.

"I don't know how to do this," she admitted.

"Yes, you do, Meredith. You're doing it."

"People have to just do it, Derek. They have kids and then they have this responsibility to them to be the parent and take care of them. They have to do it. And we see people come through the hospital all the time; you know some want to do it more than others. It doesn't mean anyone knows how to do it right."

"It's the wanting to that makes the difference," Derek agreed.

"I just love her so much. I never thought I could love anything as much as I loved surgery. Then I never thought I could love anything as much as I loved you. But Emily," she drew a breath.

"She's Emily," Derek nodded knowingly.

"Yeah," Meredith sighed. "She's mine…and I can't shake the thought that I might be failing her in some way that I don't even know about, just because I'm me and she's her, and who knows if I'm going to be enough. Even with all the trying in the world. She should have _everything_ , Derek."

"I know. She will, Mer."

"She should have a birthday party."

"She will," Derek assured her. "She'll have everything. Even if it means we're eating chocolate cake for the next three months."

Meredith laughed a little at that, but fell silent. Emily had wandered ankle-deep into the surf again. She turned around with a wry smile, and looked at Derek like she was quite literally testing the waters. Derek frowned sternly, and shook his head. Emily's expression sank, but she reluctantly followed Derek's pointed finger out of the ocean and back on to the sand.

"I look at her sometimes and I wonder if I was already in over my head with her. When I'm at work, I think about her all the time and I worry about her, but I can't leave because, you know, I have patients. I think I'm trying to do the same things as my mom did, and look what happened."

Look at me. Look at how long it took me to recover from that. Look at how I am still recovering.

Derek nodded, urging her to keep going. He kept one eye on Emily, and his hand found the small of her back. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She stayed like that for a minute, quiet and suddenly unable to look him in the eye, like the words coming out of her mouth were the most private, shameful confession.

"I don't want to mess her up, Derek. I love her too much."

"Meredith," he murmured, but she stopped him before he could continue.

"Sometimes I think maybe she didn't want to try," Meredith nodded to herself tearfully. "And other times I think maybe she wanted to but it wasn't enough. The weird thing is, I think the second one scares me more. It's different—not loving her enough to try and not trying hard enough for it to be enough. Because at least with the first one, you know. You know it's not enough, so when it's not, it's not a surprise."

He felt like he should say something, to reassure his wife before she fell apart in his arms. He watched her wring her hands a bit before she crossed her arms protectively across her stomach.

"You loved your mom," Derek murmured, as if to question without prying, even though he was almost sure that he already knew.

"Yeah, I really did," Meredith said tearfully.

"Emily loves you," he said emphatically. "So much."

She nodded. "I know. She loves me."

"Meredith, she worships the ground you walk on. She cries for you when you're not here. She runs to you when you get home. Emily thinks she is the luckiest kid in the world just because you're you."

"It will be harder for her to love me later though. If I'm not enough, it will be harder. She won't understand why."

"How can you see how she feels about you and think you might not be enough for her? She adores you."

"I just want her to be ok."

"She will be, Meredith."

"Daddy!" Emily interjected. She heaped another handful of sand on top of the pile she had started to make. "Help me!"

"I'm coming, Bean," Derek promised. "I'm just talking to Mommy right now."

"Ok," she replied in a sing-song voice.

"Meredith," he soothed. "She's ok. Everything is ok."

"It's not," she said. "You want more."

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but she stopped him before he started.

"Don't say that you don't, because I know you. I know that you want more. And it's not that I don't. Because I do. I want to give you more. But I look at her and sometimes it's all I can do to…"

"Make sure she has what she needs," Derek finished.

"Yeah," she sighed. "Derek, I wanted that baby. And it was just one more thing I couldn't give you. It was another thing I couldn't give her. So then I started thinking that it would be good for me to just focus on her. If I can raise a daughter," she trailed off. "She's here already. And she needs me. I want to be a surgeon. I do still really want that. But I want to be her mom more. So I'm just…."

"We'll do the birthday party," he assured her.

"Ok," she sighed,

"And we'll do hats. Kathleen used to have this tiara that the girls wore on their birthdays. Corrine doesn't wear it anymore, she thinks she's too old, but Maddy still likes it. We could get Emily one of those."

"She would like that," Meredith said. "She's on that princess kick."

"You know that bakery on Third? They have those cinnamon things you like? I'll see if they can do a cake."

"Just one of those sheet ones. With the flowers," Meredith said. "It doesn't have to be anything big."

"I'll tell them to do extra flowers. Do you want me to see if my mother can fly out?" he asked.

"Her family should be there," Meredith nodded.

"We'll pick a weekend, and I'll call her."

"Ok."

"And people from work. We'll have it on a day when Cristina can be there."

"Yeah," Meredith agreed.

His hand fit comfortably in the curve between where her ribs ended and her pelvis began. He curled his fingers around her just for a moment, and then swept them lightly across her back. He did want more. He couldn't deny that. Maybe he would never have it, but to at least know why was more than what he had.

In the time they had spent talking, Emily had grown tired of waiting. She stood at the bank of the water, and let the aftershocks of the waves ripple over her bare feet. Derek eased himself to his feet and went to the site of the sand castle construction.

"Em, I'm going to help you," Derek called. "Come over here. We'll build."

Emily shook her head. "Daddy, I going swimmin'."

"No, you're not," Derek reminded her. "Mommy and I already told you not today."

"I sink that I go in there," Emily suggested, pointing towards the horizon.

"Emily, the ocean is too dangerous today. Let's build a sandcastle instead."

"I don't like that," Emily pouted.

"Emily," Derek warned. When he started to walk towards her, she began to cry. She plopped down in the wet sand, and when the water crept forward, she smacked at it with both hands. He squatted down next to her, putting himself on her level. "Em, Mommy and I want to make a sandcastle with you. You are not allowed to swim today. We'll do that another day, ok?"

Emily shook her head rapidly back and forth, and dissolved into loud sobs.

"Do you want to finish your sandcastle?" Derek asked.

"No," she said defiantly.

"Well, then I guess we have to go home," Derek said.

"No," she screeched, much louder this time.

Meredith joined them at the water's edge.

"Em, Daddy and I said no. And Daddy told you that you can build a sandcastle with us, or we can go home and do something else. You are not swimming today."

"I am swimmin'," Emily said, her voice tear-soaked and full.

"No, you're not," Meredith remained firm. "Now, do you want to finish your sandcastle? You already started it."

"No," she said, and scooted further towards the water.

"Ok, let's go home then," Derek said. He took her hand, and eased himself back to his feet, but she refused to stand up with him.

"I not do that, Daddy," Emily yelled.

"Emily," Meredith said sternly. "Daddy said it's time to go, so it's time to go."

"No," she screamed, shaking her head.

Derek picked her up, and held her against his chest with both arms. At first, she made herself go rigid and try to wriggle out of his grasp, but he didn't let her go. On the way back to the house, she cried at the injustice of it all, at the fact that the ocean was right there and she was not allowed to swim in it. Eventually, her legs curled around his torso and her arms wrapped around his neck and her shrieking sobs died down into intermittent whimpers.

After that day, they decided together that maybe they needed to take a break from the beach, at least until they could take full advantage of it again. Since then, they tried a few different things—a bike ride through town, a picnic lunch on the living room floor, painting seashells on the back porch—but none of it had engaged Emily like swimming did.

On the third overcast morning, Derek got up early, just after six. Wrapped in the sheets next to him, Meredith snored slightly, her mouth hanging open a little. Her hair delicately fanned out over her pillow. Derek noticed that like Emily, her hair had gotten lighter too. He lay there for a few minutes and allowed himself to wake up naturally, relishing in taking the morning slow. Rolling on to his side, he propped himself up on one elbow and watched her sleep for a while.

He could have touched her. He could have pulled himself flush against her, laced his fingers with hers, buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathed her in, and gone back to sleep. He could have sneaked closer to her, kissed her bare shoulders and the back of her neck until she woke up, and mumbled dirty things in her ear until she turned around.

He got out of bed. She stirred a little when the mattress shifted under her, but she never woke.

He padded barefoot around the house, poking his head in every room for no particular reason. Upstairs, downstairs, back upstairs again. He peeked into Emily's room, easing the door open just a few inches until he saw the gray light stream through cracks in the blinds and Emily asleep in her bed. She had kicked all the covers off and her feet dangled over her bed rail. Her blue Seattle Grace Hospital t-shirt rode up over her stomach and she clutched Bear with one hand.

Downstairs, he made a pot of coffee, and drank the first cup black, alone on the back porch. He stretched out on the chaise lounge and sipped quietly. He appreciated the utter solitude of the moment, the absolute silence of being alone.

A woman jogged past him, wearing tight blue yoga pants and a white sports bra. Her long black hair was tied back in a ponytail and stuffed under a baseball cap. A massive golden retriever pulled her along the damp sand by his thick leather leash. Linda, the accountant from Portland, who spent weekends in a house three blocks down with her husband and twin ten-year-old sons. Scout, the dog who, when Emily gingerly petted him a few mornings before, licked her hand and made her laugh. Linda waved hastily, and he nodded hello.

"Good morning, Derek!" she called up to him. She slowed down just long enough to ask him, "How's your daughter?"

"She's good! Still asleep," he replied.

"Bring her by sometime," she offered breathlessly. "Scout would love it."

"We will," he assured her.

"Great. Have a good one," she puffed, and resumed her old pace, running past him.

He watched her disappear down the beach, growing smaller and smaller until he could no longer see her, and turned his attention back to the ocean. The little sunlight there was that morning rippled across the water. Waves rolled in more turbulent and rough than he recalled seeing in a long time. They were louder, bigger, and crashed onto shore violently. Clouds grouped themselves in heavy clusters on the horizon. The rain was coming in.

He turned around with the rattling of the screen door. Emily clenched her fingers around the handle and tried to pry it open. She still looked a little sleepy, with locks of hair sticking out at odd angles and droopy eyes only half-open. She wore only her t-shirt and a pull-up diaper, and had carried Bear downstairs with her.

"Daddy," she whined when she couldn't get the door to open.

"Hey, Bean," Derek smiled. He opened the door for her and swept her up into his arms, sinking back down onto his chair. He sat up a little more, and cradled her by his side. She gripped him like a bear cub, resting her head on his chest.

"Did you have a good night?" he asked, even though he knew it would take her a few minutes to perk up and feel like talking.

She nodded.

He held onto her, and supported her with the crook of his right elbow, letting her wake up slowly. Leaning down, he kissed her forehead.

"Daddy, your hairs are scratchin' me," she mumbled, and reached up with both hands without turning to look at him. She cupped his face and rubbed her palms flat up and down his stubble before she pushed his face away.

"Sorry," he apologized.

She slung her legs over his lap and danced Bear across the convex curve of her belly. Derek gripped one of her feet with his left hand, squeezing it gently at first, but then just holding it while they sat there.

The beach was completely deserted at this early hour of the morning. Debris scattered across the shore—seaweed, driftwood, shell fragments that the water carried in overnight. Heavy, white frothy waves thundered on to the shore, one right after the other.

"That the ocean," Emily pointed straight ahead.

"Yeah, that's it," Derek agreed.

"We not swimmin' in there today?"

"No, we're not. See how rough it is?"

"We just lookin' at it?" she asked timidly.

"Yeah, we're just looking at it," he murmured. Not touching. Not diving in. Just looking. For now, at least, while the waters were still stormy.

Emily shifted; she rolled on her side and latched on to him. Parading Bear across his chest, up his arm, across his face, she smiled and patted his hair. He drew her close, and rubbed her back a few times. Up and down, back and forth. He sipped his coffee, and placed the mug on the ground next to him.

If this was all there was, just him and Emily and Meredith, would that be ok? Emily, who made him so full sometimes that he felt like he could burst, who traced her fingers over his skin as light as a breath—she was enough. More than enough, actually. Holding her now, he felt, despite everything that had happened, staggeringly happy, and proud in a way he couldn't fully articulate. It was not that Emily wasn't enough. It wasn't that she didn't make him happy, because she did—breathlessly, achingly so. She was his firstborn. He'd waited for her for so long. Emily Grace, five pounds, three ounces. Red-faced and screaming, robust and healthy and swaddled in his arms. He had waited so long. Years. She was more than enough.

It was just—he literally closed his eyes for this—when they lost the baby, he had already welcomed that new person into his life. He or she (there had been a DNA test, but they had never asked for the results) could have been curled up on his chest right now alongside Emily. The exhilarating possibility of it all stunned him, thrilled him, when he first found out that Meredith was pregnant. If his family was complete with Emily, it became all the more so then. Now that it had happened, he couldn't imagine his life any other way. Derek Shepherd was a father of two.

When it ended, he felt like the rug had been pulled out from under him. It didn't matter that he had never held the baby. It didn't matter that there was no birth, no name, no future. It was still something real that he no longer had. Kathleen told him this was normal. She'd tried to comfort him when he called her one night a few weeks after it happened, while Meredith was still at the hospital. He'd choked and sobbed and sputtered, and she sat patiently on the other end of the line and listened. Derek, she'd said. Derek. It was real. This is a loss. Meredith feels this way too. She's grieving. You can feel sad. It was sudden. I know. Like Dad.

When you add something to what may have already been complete, when you add something to what you are thankful and lucky to have…when you suddenly have this abundance of joy, it eventually becomes normal. It weaves itself into the fibers of your life. At first, it is more, but then it simply becomes part of the whole. That part quietly becomes so vital, even though it started out as a wonderful something extra to an already full life. And when it is taken away, a big, gaping hole is left where the part once was.

Meredith wanted more too. He begged her to think about it without knowing that she did think about it. She thought about it all the time. Maybe there wouldn't be more. But he took comfort in knowing that they finally understood each other. Meredith knew what he wanted, and he knew why she was hesitating. And what's more, he didn't simply guess. She told him. She sat with him and told him how it hurt, and why.

He could make this work with her. He wanted to make this work with her. It was just—if she didn't change, could he reevaluate what he thought his life would be like? Would it be ok—could he be happy—if there was never more?

"Hey, Em?" He nudged her a little. She looked up at him expectantly. "I love you."

"Daddy, I hungry."

"Ok," he laughed. "Let's get you some breakfast."

The milk had spoiled overnight. It was kind of hard to make cereal or pancakes or anything without milk. Sitting in a kitchen that had been permeated by the nauseating smell of it, with a two-year-old pinching her nose and saying, "That's stinky, Daddy" didn't exactly make the situation better. Derek poured the milk down the sink, flushed it down with a blast of hot water, and opened the kitchen window a few inches to get some air into the room. He put a pair of sandals on Emily, and piled her into the car. The trip to the store would only take five minutes.

The entire trip took fifteen minutes. The normal weekend crowd that would have clogged the check-out lines at the convenience store was sparser than usual. Not as many people were willing to drive what was often several hours each way if the news had forecasted a washout weekend. Still, it was difficult to estimate how long you'd be gone if you never really stopped to think that you had to go both there and back and timing it was something you'd never done before.

He got out of the car Emily in one arm and a gallon of milk in the other, he nudged the front door open with his elbow.

Meredith was awake and curled up on the living room couch. The television was on but she wasn't really watching it. She cupped a steaming mug of coffee with both hands and when the screen door rattled open, she jerked to attention.

"You're back," she sighed, quickly, like she wasn't planning to actually say those words.

He frowned, and remembered that he had forgotten to leave any indication of where he was going.

"I'm back."

The rest of the day passed quietly. They took Emily to the park, and Derek took pictures while Meredith pushed her on the swings. The camera changed hands while Derek helped Emily cross the monkey bars. They ate an early lunch at home, and the three of them curled up together in Derek and Meredith's bed for a leisurely afternoon nap.

Derek didn't sleep much though. Instead, spent a good deal of time reading his book and watching Meredith and Emily asleep together, and the way Meredith's arm draped tenderly over Emily. Emily was slumped against Meredith's body, not on top of her but close enough, with her hand fiercely clutching a lock of Meredith's hair. She had to pull it when she rolled over. She had to. Emily was the most restless sleeper he'd ever seen, and whenever she slept with Meredith, she had to hold on to her hair. He wasn't sure why, but she'd done it since infancy and just never given the habit up as the years passed. Emily had been known to start at one end of the bed when she went to sleep and wake up on the other. Meredith had to be woken up constantly with this arrangement. There was no way Emily could be peaceful enough not to wake her. But she had never said a single word about it, he realized. Never. Because Emily did it to feel safe. And that was reason enough for Meredith to allow it. Once, in the course of two hours, Emily started to roll away from Meredith, taking her hair with her. Meredith barely woke, not enough to realize that Derek was already awake anyway, and pulled Emily's sleeping body back towards her, flush against her own. Her hand found Emily's back and she murmured something incomprehensible to the child before drifting back to sleep herself.

After they woke up, Meredith, armed with the week's circular for Toys R Us, left Derek and Emily at home to do some super-secret birthday shopping. Emily's birthday wasn't for another two weeks, but she had said something about leaving plenty of time to get what she wanted, and Derek didn't question it. The nearest Toys R Us was at least forty minutes away, so she wanted to try the local toy store in town first, and then would go out there if need be. She said she would be back for dinner.

In the half an hour it would take Derek to prepare pasta, heat leftover sauce, toss a salad, and warm a loaf of bread, he had hoped that Emily would busy herself coloring at the table or playing with a few toys on the living room floor. In a perfect world, he wouldn't have a two-year-old underfoot in the kitchen as he tried to fix dinner. However, Emily didn't seem to care about any notion of a perfect world. She started to color a little bit at the table, but her effort was halfhearted, just a few scribbles across one sheet of paper. The project lasted barely a few minutes before she wandered away from the table and further into the kitchen. She started to cling to Derek, standing next to him and much too close to the stove, and the large pot of boiling water, for his liking.

"Emily, why don't you go color a picture for Mommy so she can see it when she comes home?" Derek suggested as he added a box of spaghetti to the pot.

"I want you to hold me, Daddy," Emily whined, tugging on his pant leg insistently.

"I can't hold you right now, Em," Derek replied. "I'm making dinner near a hot stove."

"Daddy," she tried again.

"Em," Derek sighed, "What is it?"

"Hold me," she whimpered, stretching her arms up for him.

Derek stirred the pasta once more and gathered Emily up. Her arms immediately wrapped around his neck as she nestled into his body and started to cry quietly. "What's the matter, Bean?" he asked, rubbing her back as he sat down at the table with her. "You're alright. Let's quiet down and you can tell me what's wrong. Do you miss Mommy?"

Emily shook her head and gripped him tighter. Derek just sat there for a few minutes, whispering quietly in her ear that it was ok and to tell him what was wrong, before he felt her stomach lurch. He managed to react quickly enough to sit her more upright and away from him, just in time for her to vomit all over the kitchen floor and dissolve into loud, scared sobs.

"Bean," Derek said sympathetically as Emily's cries punctuated the air. "Not feeling very good, huh?"

Emily shook her head, tears staining her cheeks as they spilled down. He didn't let go of her despite the fact that she had vomit all down her front, some of which had gotten on him as well. "I not feel good," Emily finally whispered tearfully.

"You're ok, Em," he comforted. "You're ok. Let's get you in the tub, how's that sound? Can you stand up for Daddy?" he asked, stripping off her sundress and shoes and just leaving them on the floor for now. He left everything, stopping only to turn the stove off before he carried her upstairs to run a warm bath.

He would clean everything up later as soon as Emily was feeling better. "Emily, I want you to tell Daddy if you don't feel well from now on," he instructed gently, watching her nod in response as she sat miserably in the bathtub. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you before, ok?"

"Daddy," Emily said with a wavering voice as she tried to stand up in the tub and reach for him.

"Em," he replied, quickly taking her hand so she wouldn't slip but turning her around so that when she got sick again, she'd get it all in the tub.

Emily vomited violently into the shallow water, her tiny stomach pushing the rest of her lunch out. It was probably the most vulnerable he'd ever seen her, the way her lips curved into a sad pout and she rubbed tears away with one hand while she tried to climb out of the tub and into his embrace with the other.

"Can Mommy come home now?" she asked Derek in broken, tearful speech.

"Mommy's going to be home as soon as she can," Derek promised.

"I want Mommy," she cried.

"I know, Bean. But I'm here. It's ok."

He lifted her out of the tub and wrapped her in one of the towels folded by the tub. "How are you feeling now? Any better?" he asked as his arms encircled her protectively. He made no move to get up. He simply drained the tub and sat there on the bathroom floor with her, trying to comfort her and stop her from crying.

"Daddy," she sobbed over and over, digging her nails into the skin of his chest and resting her head on his shoulder.

"Emily," he soothed. "It's ok. Sometimes our bellies hurt us so they want to get rid of what's inside so it won't hurt anymore."

Explaining brain maladies to a multitude of Seattle Grace patients was routine. Head trauma, brain bleed, blood clot, craniotomy. Each case was a little different, but he had never met a patient who marched bravely into brain surgery with no reservations. There was always just the slightest shadow of doubt. Blind faith didn't exist in neurosurgery. The only time he had ever experienced complete and total trust is when he held Emily, knowing that there was no doubt in her mind that he had all the answers to everything.

"I not be sick anymore?" she asked.

"I hope not, Bean," he replied.

"Daddy, you can hold me?"

"Yeah, I'll hold you," he whispered, kissing the crown of her head. "Shhh," he soothed. Her hand gripped the space between his thumb and index finger. "That's my girl," he repeated, and after a few moments, Derek was able to coax her sobs into broken, sporadic whimpers. He pulled the towel more tightly around her, making sure that it covered her so she was warm enough. Glancing down, he saw that she wasn't asleep; she had simply exhausted herself into silence.

Sitting quietly on the bathroom floor, Derek lost track of time. He wanted to call Meredith as soon as Emily had gotten sick, but hadn't wanted to leave Emily alone. Now, he figured that Meredith would be home any minute anyway. He weighed whether or not to tell her when she got home that Emily had cried for her, but before he could decide for sure, he heard the front door open and close and footsteps downstairs. Still holding Emily flush against his chest, he tried not to move for fear of disturbing her.

"Mer," he called softly. His voice didn't carry all the way down, but when he heard Meredith jog up the stairs, he could only assume that she had seen the kitchen. "Meredith," he repeated.

"Hey," Meredith said, entering the bathroom and finding her husband and daughter leaning against the wall. "What happened?" she asked concernedly. "Is she ok?"

"Stomach virus, I think," Derek said. "She was fine all afternoon, and as soon as I started dinner, she got clingy and teary, and she got sick all over the kitchen floor. In the tub too," he said.

"Em," Meredith sighed sympathetically, "How's my girl?" She perched on the edge of the tub, and Derek gingerly tried to get up. She closed her eyes for a moment, in frustration more than anything else, like she couldn't believe she wasn't there for her through this from the beginning, like she couldn't believe that even without work to get in the way, she missed the one time when Emily needed her. "Here, I'll take her," Meredith offered.

Carefully, Derek eased Emily into Meredith's arms, smiling wistfully as Emily's hands immediately clutched the fabric of Meredith's shirt and her face nuzzled against her mother's chest. "Mommy," she murmured, swallowing back a tired yawn.

Meredith's hands immediately, and so instinctively, cupped Emily's head and back, trying to communicate an unspoken security. "Emily," her lips leaked out as they pressed gently on Emily's forehead.

"I'll be right back," Derek promised as he got quickly to his feet and left the room. A few minutes later, he returned with a pull-up diaper and a pair of pajamas. "How did everything go?" Derek asked, expertly strapping the diaper on his child while barely moving her.

"I got almost everything," she said. "There was this party store right next to the T-O-Y store, so I got some stuff there too. I'm sorry, I kind of maybe went a little overboard," she told Derek, as she helped him put pajamas on a finally groggy Emily.

"It's ok," he said.

"Derek, let's give her some Pepto-Bismol," Meredith suggested. "Em, will you take some medicine for Mommy? That's my good girl," she praised when Emily nodded. Derek opened the bathroom cabinet and poured the correct dosage of the medicine into a tiny plastic cup, passing it to Meredith before squatting down in front of Emily.

"Drink this, Em," Meredith instructed gently.

"I not be sick anymore?" Emily asked Meredith with hopeful eyes.

"I hope not," Meredith replied, holding the cup to her lips and coaxing the pink liquid into her mouth.

Emily gingerly swallowed the last of it, leaning her exhausted frame against Meredith's body for support. Derek smiled comfortingly at his daughter, his hand touching her face briefly. "Meredith," he warned a moment later, when he noticed Emily's expression change drastically in an instant.

Meredith reacted instinctively, immediately on her feet and holding her daughter over the toilet, just before she heaved pink and harsh into it. She took a sip of the paper cup of water Derek offered her, but she had barely swallowed when it came right back up. Meredith held her over the toilet with both hands, one under the backs of her legs and one around her chest and under her armpits. She tried not to jostle her and just waited, whispering soothing words until Emily seemed like she was done. She shifted Emily in her arms and Derek noticed that the toddler was glazed in sweat. She looked exhausted.

"Mommy, you fix my belly all up," Emily begged tearfully as Meredith pulled her back towards her and wiped her mouth with the now discarded towel. She clawed her way up Meredith's torso like a koala bear, tears dripping onto the fabric of her shirt.

"I'm going to try, Em," Meredith promised.

"You can fix it, Mommy," Emily replied.

"Em," Meredith soothed sympathetically. Derek noticed the hitch in Meredith's voice as well. "I'm going to sit with you and hold you until your belly feels better, how's that?" she asked, settling onto the floor with Emily with her back against the tub. She looked up at Derek. Get Bear, she mouthed.

Derek left and returned a few minutes later, having changed his shirt, with the stuffed animal and a blanket. He sat down next to Meredith and covered Emily with the soft piece of pink thermal. Meredith tugged on the edges of the fabric, pulling it securely around Emily's body. She cradled Emily like an infant, resting Emily's head in the crook of her arm and tucking Bear in between them. "Sometimes we get sick," she murmured, trying to explain. "And we usually feel much better in the morning, but when we don't, it's our mom and dad's job to sit with us until we do, so that's what Daddy and I are going to do, ok?"

"Ok," Emily whispered, taking hold of Meredith's hand.

"It's ok," Meredith continued. "Nothing's going to happen to you." She pressed a hand and then her lips against Emily's forehead, trying to detect a fever. "It's ok," she repeated.

"Bean, how bout we tell you a story?" Derek suggested, taking one of Emily's tiny feet in his hands.

Emily shook her head. "Don't leave, Daddy."

"I won't leave, I'll just tell you one that's in my head," Derek assured her. "Not from a book."

"Ok," she agreed.

"One day, a long time ago, there was a prince sitting in a restaurant. He just moved to Seattle from a place called New York. Know where that is, Em?" he asked, smiling when Emily shook her head no. "It's all the way on the other side of the country. We have to take an airplane to get there.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the expression on Meredith's face change from worry to amusement. As the words flowed out of his mouth, warm and rich, recognition flickered across her face. She looked up, away from Emily, and at him as he started to tell their daughter the story of them. A hesitant smile crossed her features. It was fleeting, but it was there for a slice of real time before she turned her attention back to Emily.

Derek continued, "The prince was very lonely and sad because he didn't have a princess. And he was sitting in this restaurant wondering if he would ever be happy again. While he was sitting there drinking his water," he stopped as Meredith silently rolled her eyes with a good-natured grin. "While he was drinking his water," he resumed, "He saw the prettiest princess in the whole world sitting in the same exact restaurant that he was in. He didn't know anything about the princess, not even her name. He only knew that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. And even though he was sad, he wanted to meet the princess, because he thought maybe she could make him happy. So he got up from where he was sitting to see if he could talk to her."

"And the princess didn't really want anyone to talk to her because she was very lonely and scared," Meredith chimed in, the eye contact impenetrable between her and Emily.

"Why?" Emily asked curiously.

"Since she was a grown-up, her mommy didn't live with her anymore," Meredith replied. "So she was all by herself."

"Where's her daddy?" Emily asked.

"She never had one."

"Oh," Emily sighed. Satisfied with that answer, she snuggled against her mother and looked expectantly at Derek.

"So the prince sat next to the princess," Derek continued, "And he told her that he had never been to Seattle before, but he got a new job so he had to move there. He was sad to move away from New York, but he had to leave."

"Why?" Emily asked again.

"He just wanted to start over, Em," Derek explained gently. "Anyway, the prince thought the princess was the prettiest princess he had ever seen."

"But the princess didn't want to talk to the prince because she was so sad. She just wanted to be by herself," Meredith added.

"Cause talkin' to strangers isn't allowed?" Emily asked, her voice catching on the last syllable and rising a bit as she shifted in Meredith's arms.

"Yeah," Meredith smiled, "No talking to strangers. Shhh," she soothed before Emily could start crying again. She smoothed Emily's sweaty hair off her face, and lightly grazed her fingers over Emily's stomach. "You're ok. It's ok. Mommy's here. Keep telling the story," she urged Derek.

"The prince wanted to talk to the princess very much, but he wasn't sure how to get her to listen," Derek continued. "She didn't want to talk to him at all. But then the prince told the princess that she should talk to him. And she asked why," he recalled fondly.

"And the prince said 'I'm someone you need to get to know to love,'" Meredith finished. "So the princess thought that the prince sounded a little bit stupid."

"Don't say 'stupid,' Mommy," Emily instructed gently, getting groggier and groggier with each word.

Derek laughed. "Maybe the prince was a little bit stupid."

"He was, a little bit," Meredith smirked. "So then the prince wanted to know about the princess."

"But she said that she was just a girl in a…restaurant," Derek amended himself, grinning in spite of himself as he watched an amused smile creep discreetly across Meredith's lips, even though she was focusing her attention entirely on her daughter.

"But the prince said that was ok, because he was just a guy in a restaurant."

"And soon, they fell in love." Derek squeezed Emily's foot in his hand. "They fell in love and lived happily ever after."

Emily nodded, in appreciation of an ending she expected. "Mommy," she whimpered, reaching for Meredith.

"It's ok," Meredith repeated over and over, rubbing her palms over Emily's arms and then across her forehead. "I'm going to put you in your bed, ok? And when you wake up in the morning, you'll be all better."

Derek helped Meredith to her feet, and she carried Emily to her bedroom. Meredith covered her with the pink blanket, and kissed her forehead again. She squatted down and smoothed Emily's hair back over and over, whispering things Derek couldn't quite hear completely, though he caught a lot of "I love yous" in Meredith's buttery, warm tone that was usually reserved just for their daughter. He left them there alone for a moment, and went downstairs to start cleaning up the mess in the kitchen.

He drained the water out of the pot, and dumped the half-cooked pasta in the trash. He just started on washing the dirty dishes in the sink when Meredith came back downstairs. "She's asleep for now," she sighed, pushing the loose locks of hair off her face. "I don't know if she's done, but I left a trashcan next to the bed for her."

"Will she know to throw up in there?" Derek wondered aloud.

"It's worth a shot," she replied, gathering up Emily's soiled clothes off the floor to put in the wash. "I'm only going to be a few minutes down here anyway. Do you have your shirt?"

"Oh…yeah, it's in the laundry room already."

"I'll put it in the wash with her dress," she offered, heading for the stairs.

He nodded. "Meredith—"

Loud coughing and a gag coming from upstairs interrupted him. "Mommy!" Emily cried.

Meredith paused for just a second on the stairs, lingering on the third step and waiting for him to finish what he was going to say. Derek shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "Go."

Meredith bounded up the stairs, and into Emily's room. Derek could hear Emily's fearful sobs and Meredith's muffled voice, drifting down the stairs in quieter, soothing tones.

Derek scrubbed the floor and the kitchen table, and somewhere in that time, the whole house grew quiet. Emily must have settled again. When he finished, he went upstairs. Emily's dress was simply left on the floor. He gathered it up, along with the sheets off Emily's bed and his shirt from the laundry room, and put everything in the wash together.

In the master bedroom, he found Emily lying in bed, and Meredith right next to her, sitting on the edge of an armchair she had dragged over from the corner of the room. The sheets were bunched down at the foot of the bed, and Emily laid more towards the middle, curled up in the fetal position. She was naked except for her diaper, and the pajamas she had been wearing were balled up on the floor, but she was asleep.

"How's she doing?" he asked quietly, perching on the chair's armrest with his right leg bent and folded in. He wrapped an arm around Meredith's body, and she put her hand on his knee.

"She just got sick again," Meredith said. "All over her bed."

"I know, I just put the sheets in the wash."

"Thank you," she murmured appreciatively.

"Mer," he murmured. "It's going to be ok."

She nodded, and gently squeezed the muscle where his knee met his thigh.

Sighing, she looked up at him, blinking back a few exhausted tears, and smiled. He would never forget the way her voice caught on her words as she spoke.

"You turned it into a fairy tale."


	11. You leaned on me

" _And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name." - Orson Scott Card_

* * *

Meredith's immune system was normally impenetrable. It wasn't due to a daily vitamin C supplement, and it certainly wasn't due to a well-balanced diet and eight full hours of sleep a night. Five years of working in a hospital had exposed her to every contagious, inconvenient little bug in the book, and had allowed her to build up a natural immunity. To almost everything, in fact, except to whatever Emily had the day before.

That night, after Emily had thrown up all over her own bed, Meredith moved her to her and Derek's bed. She managed to coax Emily into sleep for a whole hour before she woke up gagging again. The trashcan helped a little, but at that point, Meredith just decided to cut her losses and spent the rest of the night in the bathroom with Emily. Derek joined them, and eventually, all three of them fell asleep, with Derek and Meredith upright against the wall and Emily sprawled on a blanket on the floor with her head in Meredith's lap.

Throughout the course of the night, Meredith woke up twice. The first time, it was barely anything, just a few seconds of consciousness and one eye open, bookended by sheer exhaustion. Emily was still asleep, and the worst of it seemed like it was over. She went back to sleep. The second time, she woke up to the distinct sensation of bile rising. She tried to push the feeling away, but it rooted itself in, churning and twisting inside her stomach. A wave of sudden heat washed over her, and her heart started to pound. She felt her heart beating against her chest, and took a deep breath through her nostrils, pursing her lips tightly closed. Nauseous. Definitely nauseous.

She eased Emily's upper body out of her lap and onto the blanket. A few seconds later, the sound of her retching into the toilet woke Derek.

"Meredith." Derek sprung to his feet, gingerly stepping around Emily to get to his wife. He rested a hand on her back, and swept the hair away from her face, waiting for her to finish.

"You're probably next," she groaned, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand as she fell back against the wall.

"Probably," he nodded. He flushed the toilet. "The good news is that it's probably a 24-hour thing, and we'll all be fine for Em's birthday."

"Yeah, that's good," Meredith nodded. "A couple days to get back on track. She's still asleep?" she wondered aloud, looking down at Emily to make sure that her eyes were indeed still closed and her breathing was still relaxed and gentle.

"Yeah, she's still asleep."

Meredith nodded again, exhaling quickly through barely parted lips and gripping her sweatpants tightly. She bunched the fabric in her hands and swallowed hard.

"Are you ok?" Derek asked.

"I'm fine. I'm just," she paused and sucked another breath loudly through her nose as she stood up. "I'm just going to go in our bathroom. She's finally asleep. I don't want to wake her."

"Ok, let me just put her in her bed and I'll come in and sit with you."

She shook her head. "She doesn't have sheets on her bed yet. I'm fine, Derek. Stay with the baby."

"Mer, I think she's done for awhile. It's ok."

"No, if she's not, I don't want her to wake up by herself. Stay with Em, Derek. I'm fine."

"Ok," he agreed. "You'll call me if you need anything?"

"I will," she promised.

She did. Call him. Because by 4 AM, she was pretty sure that her stomach was completely and utterly empty, and when she crawled into bed, she was cold and hot at the same time and she had a gross acidy taste in her mouth that wouldn't go away and she thought a glass of water would help with one or more of these things.

She felt a little pathetic calling for him like that, and a little bit like an invalid, trying to get her hoarse voice to carry all the way down the hall. She also felt a little like an annoying patient who constantly had her paged for no reason other than to fulfill one non-pressing, non-surgical need or another. But she did want him there. Which felt like reason enough.

She barely had to call his name twice before he was there, gliding smoothly into the room and immediately to her side. He perched on the edge of the bed, close to where she collapsed into it. Her t-shirt clung to her skin, and she covered herself with only a sheet. She batted a loose lock of hair away from her face, and nuzzled her cheek against the pillow, but she reached for him. Clutched at the jeans he still hadn't had a chance to change out of. Squeezed at the muscles of his quads. Grabbed at his hand until his fingers intertwined with hers.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"I'm fine," he assured her. "How are you?"

"I am done puking. For now, at least. But I think I have a fever."

Both of his hands traveled up her body, cupping her face and pressing gently on her forehead. "You do," he said softly.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could even get the words out, he was right there with them. "Em's ok," he assured her. "We stayed in the bathroom for a little while longer, but then I changed her sheets and moved her to her bed. She's sleeping."

"Ok," Meredith nodded.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"I just wanted some water. It's ok, I'll get it."

"No, I'll get it. How about some crackers?"

"No," she shook her head. "Not yet. Oh," she groaned, and drew her legs up and closer to her chest. "How do you not feel nauseous?"

"Working in a hospital for fifteen years? The brute strength of my immune system?"

"The fact that you're an ass?" Meredith countered back playfully, tiredly, sinking back onto the pillows. "You should sleep, Derek."

"I will," he promised. "Not now. Maybe I'll take this chair into Em's room?" he suggested, motioning to the armchair Meredith had used earlier that night.

"Yeah," she breathed.

"And I'll get you some water."

"Thank you," she said, drifting back into exhausted sleep as she absentmindedly massaged sore stomach muscles with one hand. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Derek had this under control. It's ok, it's ok.

By the time Derek sank into the armchair in Emily's room, it was nearly 5:00 in the morning. In the two minutes it had taken him to go downstairs and come back up, Meredith had fallen back to sleep, so he just left the glass of water by their bed for Meredith to get to when she woke up. As quietly as he could, he dragged the armchair down the hall and into Emily's bedroom, setting it right next to her bed, and thankfully not waking her in the process.

He bent over her sleeping frame and checked for signs of fever one last time before sitting down and closing his eyes. As exhausted as he was, sleep didn't come. Not at first, anyway. He kept opening his eyes, just to make sure Emily was still asleep. He kept straining his ears, trying to hear even the softest sound from Meredith. Finally, after the house had been utterly silent for a long string of continuous moments, he allowed himself to succumb to his fatigue and fall asleep.

A few hours later, the light pressure of Emily's palms on his legs as she tried to crawl into his lap woke him up. Emily settled herself into his arms. Her pull-up diaper was dry, and the shirt that Meredith had slipped onto her while she was sleeping earlier that night was not soaked in sweat. Any fever she had, had broken; as Derek rubbed his hands up and down her arms and pressed one palm to her forehead, he noted that she was cool to the touch.

"Hey," he mumbled sleepily, kissing the top of her head. "How are you feeling?"

"Why are you in my room, Daddy?" she asked.

"I just wanted to make sure that you were ok, Bean."

"Because my belly hurted me so bad?"

"Yeah, that's exactly why," Derek smiled. "Does it still hurt?"

"Not the biggest like yesterday anymore."

"That's good, Bean. Do you want some breakfast?"

"No, I stay with you," she said. She nuzzled into his chest and gripped bunches of his t-shirt in her hand, dangling her knees off his lap.

"Ok," Derek agreed.

"Where's my Mommy?" Emily asked, yawning.

"Her belly was hurting her last night too, so she's resting."

"Oh," Emily murmured sleepily. "Everybody's belly hurted?"

"Not mine. Just yours and Mommy's."

"Oh. Not you, Daddy."

"Not me. What do you think, Bean, how about some TV?"

"Ok," she agreed.

Derek scooped Emily into his arms, balancing her weight on his right hip and encircling her completely with his right arm. Downstairs, they sat down together on the sofa, and he flipped on the television. Early-morning infomercials blared into the living room. A blonde Australian man was very excitedly pitching some sort of appliance that would revolutionize the modern kitchen. Derek kept it on for a few minutes, but Emily was not amused.

"Daddy, I not like this."

"I know, this is silly, isn't it?" Derek asked. He quickly scanned through the channels while she inched closer to him. It was a little claustrophobic, he thought, to have her latched onto him so tightly, breathing shared air, and digging her tiny nails into the skin of his shoulder. He felt her breathing quicken, and her chest rise and fall more rapidly against his.

"Daddy," she whimpered.

"Bean, are you ok?" he asked soothingly, trying to stop her crying before it started. He dropped the remote next to him on the sofa and wrapped two arms around his daughter. "Shh, you're ok," he murmured over and over. "What do you need? Tell Daddy."

She gripped at his shirt, and clung to him so fiercely that he couldn't have pried her away if he wanted to. He smoothed her hair back and smiled down at her.

"Does your belly hurt?" he asked, rubbing it gently, sure he had found the source of the problem. He was just about to gather her up and carry her back up to the bathroom, just in case, but she finally shook her head no.

She took several deep, quivering breaths, breaths hard enough to shake her entire body. Exhaling loudly and sporadically, and punctuating her sentence with a few fitful hiccups, "Daddy, where's my Bear?"

"I don't know, but we'll find him. Do you remember where you left him?"

"I don't—," she whimpered. "I not know."

"Shh," he murmured. "It's ok. We'll find him. I'll put a movie on for you and then I'll go find Bear, ok? How does that sound?"

"Ok," she nodded.

Quickly, Derek fashioned a makeshift bed for Emily on the sofa. He nestled her between throw pillows and covered her with a blanket. He made sure that _Cinderella_ , still her favorite movie, was playing through from the beginning before he dashed upstairs to look for her beloved stuffed animal. A brief search of the bathroom, the last place he'd seen it, yielded no results, and her bedroom seemed a very unlikely hiding place, as her bed had been stripped down to only the mattress.

The door to his and Meredith's bedroom swung open easily.

Meredith was facedown on the bed with her head buried in her pillows, finally asleep after a long night. He tried to be quiet as he poked around the room in search of Bear, but he couldn't find the stuffed animal anywhere. While he desperately tried to come up with a plan B, or at least some other places he could look for the thing, he caught a glimpse of Bear's mangy brown fur sticking out from under the sheets. The sheets had been slightly kicked off, but Meredith's leg still covered some of the toy, trapping it underneath her. Gingerly, he tiptoed over to the edge of the bed and tried to pry Bear away without waking Meredith.

No sooner had Derek succeeded in moving the toy away from Meredith, did Meredith stir at the slight commotion.

"Derek," she said, her voice hoarse and tired.

"Hey," he smiled sympathetically. He placed Bear on the nightstand next to the bed, and then sat down in the crook of space between her curled up legs and the pillow her arms were wrapped around. "How are you feeling?"

"Mmm," she shook her head no.

"That good, huh?" he asked, smoothing her hair off her face with the palm of his hand.

"Where's the baby?" Meredith asked.

"We're watching _Cinderella_ downstairs. She's ok, Mer."

"Has she been sick anymore?"

"No, not since she woke up. She's tired. She cried a little bit; I think she's just scared. But she's lying on the couch with me. She's ok."

"I'll come down and watch the movie with you."

"No, Mer, go back to sleep."

"Did you sleep at all?"

"A little."

"I'm sorry," she murmured, her eyes slipping closed again for a moment before she managed to hazily open them and look up at him.

She was so apologetic, Derek noticed. Deliriously tired and miserably sick, but so apologetic for something so trivial. There had been plenty of times when Derek went without sleep for days. Late nights studying away his four years in medical school. Endless shifts on call as an intern, and then a resident. Surgeries that went into the wee hours of the morning. Sure, it wasn't as easy to bounce back from an all-nighter as it used to be, but it didn't mean it couldn't be done.

He leaned forward a little, propping himself up with one fist on the opposite side of Meredith's body from where he was sitting. She was mere moments away from sleep again.

"Don't apologize," he whispered. "It's not your fault."

The second time around, Emily actually stayed awake for the entire movie. After dozens of viewings, Derek knew every single line by heart. He also knew that if Emily was going to doze off, she would have to be really tired, and it would happen after Cinderella lost the glass slipper but before her stepmother locked her away. No matter how tired she was, she always fought to stay awake through the part where Cinderella met Prince Charming at the ball.

This particular time, though they hadn't gotten to the ball scene yet, Emily was relaxed, yet attentive. Over the past hour or so, Derek had gotten her to drink some juice. She held a sippy cup firmly in her hands, and though she only took a sip when Derek reminded her to, she was keeping it down.

Though it was nearly noon, Derek didn't offer Emily any lunch, and since she didn't ask, he figured her stomach was still uneasy. He was thankful for just the juice at this point.

By the time they got to the scene where Cinderella's animal friends helped make her dress for the ball, Emily had turned herself around on the sofa and maneuvered herself in such a way that her head rested on the seat of the couch, one arm dangling over the side holding her sippy cup, and her feet daintily crossed at the ankles and resting on Derek's shoulder.

By the time Meredith padded drowsily downstairs, it was a little after noon. Emily had already moved to a more upright position, slumped against Derek with her fingers curled around his hand.

"Hey," Derek said, smiling when he looked up and saw her walk into the living room. "How are you feeling?"

"Mmm," she nodded briefly and took a seat next to him, on the opposite side of Emily, on the couch. "Better."

"Good."

"You're only at this part?" Meredith asked.

"Second time around," he clarified.

"Mommy, your belly hurted you the worst?" Emily asked. She abandoned her half-full juice cup and tried crawling across Derek's lap to Meredith.

"Em, let's let Mommy relax a little," Derek instructed gently.

"No, it's ok," Meredith quickly interjected. "Em, come here." Emily gingerly crawled over Derek's lap and made it into Meredith's through a combined effort from all three of them. Derek gripped her at the waist and lifted her, while Meredith clasped under her arms and pulled her gently towards her, and Emily reached with her arms outstretched for Meredith's embrace.

"Mommy, your belly hurted you all in the night?" Emily asked, seated in Meredith's lap, facing her, as Derek pushed some of her loose curls off her face.

"Yeah, it did, Em," Meredith said. She kissed Emily's forehead, like she had to see for herself that there was no fever.

The gesture was not something she learned in medical school. And she certainly never remembered Ellis kissing her forehead as a child to see if she was warm. It was actually kind of pathetic, when she thought about it, that the first time she had seen that done wasn't until her second year as a resident when she rounded on a post-op 5-year-old recovering from a craniotomy to remove his malignant brain tumor. She was heavily pregnant with Emily at the time, and maybe if not for that, she would have scoffed that it was probably the least medically-reliable way to detect a temperature.

It wasn't technically medically-reliable. But it was instinct. When Emily started cutting her teeth as a six-month-old, Meredith found herself cradling a screaming baby in the middle of the night with her lips pressed to her daughter's forehead, trying to detect the faintest hint of fever. She remembered that mother in the PICU only after she had settled Emily into sleep again. She could have cried at the thought of it. Just happy, exhausted tears of relief. She had a mother's instinct.

"Mommy, I throwed up," Emily said matter-of-factly. She traced an index finger in random swirls around Meredith's stomach.

"I know," Meredith replied. She cupped Emily's lower back with both hands and settled her down onto her lap. "Daddy said you were feeling a little better though."

Emily nodded. "Mommy, did you throwed up too in the nighttime?"

"Yeah, I did, Em," Meredith replied.

"It's yucky."

"I know," Meredith smiled sympathetically. "It's not fun, is it?"

"No," Emily shook her head. "Did you cry, Mommy?"

"No," she answered. "Sometimes that happens though."

"I cried," Emily admitted. "Cause it was scary."

"That's ok," Meredith assured her immediately.

Derek added, "You're allowed to cry when something hurts or you feel scared or sad. That's what crying is for."

"See," Meredith directed, turning Emily around to look at the TV. "Even Cinderella cries sometimes."

" _It's just no use…no use at all…. I can't believe, not anymore. There's nothing left for me, nothing,"_ Cinderella sobbed, cradling her head in her hands as she knelt before a garden bench.

" _Nothing, my dear?"_ the Fairy Godmother asked, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. _"Oh, now you don't really mean that."_

" _Oh, but I do."_

Meredith adjusted Emily in her lap until the child was comfortably situated in her arms, bearing all her weight on Meredith's left side.

"Are you ok holding her?" Derek asked softly. "Is she too much weight on your stomach?"

"No, she's ok," Meredith replied softly. "Are you ok?" she asked quickly. "She's been hanging on you all night. Are you sure you don't feel sick?"

"I'm ok, Mer," Derek assured her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know you must be tired."

"You don't get to apologize," he corrected her. "You're sick. It happens. Besides, when the movie is over, we can all take a nap. I'll be fine."

"Mommy, she the Fairy Godmother," Emily cried, pointing a finger at the screen.

"Oh, she's the best, isn't she, Em?"

Emily leaned forward eagerly, in anticipation of her favorite part. In taking the majority of her weight off Meredith's chest, Meredith was able to lean forward and then back into Derek's arms. It had already happened, it was already done, before she even realized she had done it. It was more instinct than anything else. Such a simple gesture was the doing of that instinct she'd fought so hard for that it took years for it to even deserve the name. Still, most of the time, she didn't think she had a natural ability at this kind of thing. What would normally be called instinct, the simple act of a wife leaning into her husband, was the product of years of effort. Most of the time, she was sure she did not have an instinctual ability to be good at things like this. The relationship thing. The intimacy thing. The marriage thing. It came easily to Derek. But she was someone who lost whole nights of sleep worrying about how to make this happen for herself. More than that, at various times, she came so close to losing her sanity, losing herself, and, more than once—several painful times, in fact—losing Derek.

She sighed, and warm, spent air swirled past her open lips into their shared space. His arm wrapped around her, and his hand rested on the hip opposite of the one touching him. He slipped his hand under her t-shirt just a little, and rubbed the delicate skin of her stomach, like he could soothe any lingering ache away just by this simple motion.

Emily moved again, slipping down until her head was in Meredith's lap, her cheek pressed flat against Meredith's thigh. She curled up tightly in the fetal position, balling her hands into fists and drawing them up to her chest. Meredith draped an arm over Emily's body, grazing her fingers across the sliver of exposed skin between the top of her pull-up and the hem of her t-shirt.

It wasn't instinct. At least she didn't think it was. And it wasn't perfect. After a moment or two of sitting like that, Derek had to quietly ask Meredith to ease herself forward a bit; his hand was asleep. She still had the hot, wavering almost-sick feeling and a faint taste of bile in her throat. Instinct and perfection; it wasn't either of these.

" _Nonsense, child. If you'd lost all your faith, I couldn't be here. And here I am! Oh, come now. Dry those tears. You can't go to the ball looking like that."_

" _The ball? Oh, but I'm not,"_ Cinderella said hastily.

" _Of course you are. But we have to hurry, because even miracles take a little time."_

But in that moment, when she felt Derek's lips on her temple, and when that sensation took over from the dull ache of vaguely nauseous exhaustion that thrummed every other nerve ending, it felt that way. It sure felt like it was both.

Meredith didn't feel totally, pretty much, somewhat, maybe kinda better until well after nine o'clock that night. After all three of them fell asleep on the couch after the movie. After Emily had had a minor setback, gagging on a saltine cracker so hard that she vomited twice before it was all over. After they decided that maybe it would just be apple juice for the res t of the day.

She curled up in bed for what felt like the millionth time that day. Actually, it felt like she had barely left the bed at all. She kicked the covers up and off her in an act of utter restlessness, but was forced to pull them back over her body when the cool sea breeze billowed through the open window. She almost got up to close it, but the smell of puke really had permeated the entire room by the end of the day. While she was still nauseous, she barely noticed it, but now that she wasn't feeling so sick anymore, it was noticeable. Very noticeable. Derek opened every window upstairs in an attempt to air the house out, to get rid of that acidic stench of bile. But it made it kind of cold. Really freakin' cold, like colder than she would have thought it would be after dark on an August night at the beach. So even though the sheets felt like they were coated in sickness and invisible diseased filth, she had to pull them up. Tomorrow. She would let herself be gross for one more night, because she was just _that_ tired. But tomorrow, she needed to shower for as long as the hot water would hold out. And she needed to strip the bed down to the mattress and change the sheets. Ew, she thought, turning over to stare at the closed door and wait for Derek to come in. This is gross.

At least she didn't feel precariously sick anymore, like at any moment her stomach could lurch and empty again with barely a second's notice. Her abdominal muscles were a bit sore, and though she had already slept most of the day, the exhaustion set in like a morning fog that wouldn't burn away. Maybe tomorrow she would be awake, and actually feel awake. Right now though? Right now, it was time to burrow under the covers and rest her head on the pillows, because dirty and diseased though they might have been, they were really soft. And she really was pretty tired. If anyone was going to be tired after today, it would be Derek, she corrected herself sleepily, somewhat guiltily.

Her eyes slipped closed for a moment, before she forced herself to open them again. Stay awake. Derek is just checking on Emily. And he made you tea. He offered to. At least stay awake to drink the freakin' tea. She fought with herself, torn between the knowledge that a full night's sleep, most likely uninterrupted by vomiting, awaited her as soon as she allowed herself to surrender to it and the thought that Derek had left her cups of tea and ginger ale and water and plates of saltine crackers on the night table all day because she asked for them and by the time he got back upstairs, she was already asleep again. Stay awake, stay awake. It doesn't take very long to make a cup of tea. Derek was making it and he'd be upstairs in like two minutes. Just stay awake. A couple more minutes.

The door swung open, and Derek came quietly in, holding a mug with steam rising off the top of it. He had changed into new pajamas, a short-sleeved black t-shirt and a pair of dark green flannel pajama pants. He looked cleaner. He had gotten a shower earlier, while she and Emily were napping. He handed it to Meredith, and she took a few tentative sips, letting the warmth spread through her fingers while he crawled into bed next to her.

"Hey," he mumbled, sinking down into the soft mattress next to her. She took one more sip of the tea before placing the mug on the night table. Slithering down underneath the covers, she turned on her side, facing away from him. He wedged himself against her, their bodies connecting like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. "How are you doing?" he asked as he draped an arm lazily over the curve of her abdomen.

"Better," she whispered. "Thanks you. For the tea, I mean. And, you know, everything. I wouldn't have been able to handle Emily today without you."

"You don't have to thank me, Mer. She is asleep though."

"Any problems?" she asked.

"No. Well, she did keep asking me when we were going back to the ocean."

"So she must be feeling at least a little better," Meredith countered amusedly.

"I think she is. I'm sure she'll be fine in the morning."

"I hope so," Meredith trailed off dreamily, settling into his arms. For the first time in a very long time, she felt comfortable. And it wasn't about just the subsidence of the nausea. Someone was holding her, and that someone felt like her husband again.

"I got her the stuff that we talked about," she spoke up after a moment. It felt like forever ago that she had gone shopping for Emily's birthday presents, but it was barely 24 hours before. "They had everything there, so it's all in the trunk when we get a chance. The baseball tee was kind of bulky. It said that some assembly was required, but how hard could it be?"

"We'll figure it out," he assured her. "A couple of brain surgeons should be able to assemble a kid's baseball tee."

"I want you to get her some books though. Just two or three new ones. Not harder books—I don't think that's the right word. She's not actually reading them herself.—But just some books that aren't for babies." She made a slight humming sound when Derek's hand slipped just under the hem of her t-shirt and rubbing the taut skin gently. "I can't believe she's already three."

"Not a little bean anymore," Derek murmured. He whispered the words right into the delicate skin at the nape of her neck, and when he did, she reached for his hand, clasping it in hers. A flash of déjà vu washed over her, taking her back.

" _Can you feel it in there?" she asked one night in the early spring, covering his hand with her own and pressing it to her stomach as they spooned on a bunk in an on-call room. It was late, so much the middle of the night that it was very nearly dawn. "Right there?"_

" _No."_

" _Seriously? It's fluttering around so much."_

" _I can't, Mer."_

" _What about here?" She moved his hand a little to the left._

" _Not yet."_

" _It's weird."_

" _It feels weird?" he asked, kissing her shoulder over her scrubs._

" _Yeah. It's crazy that it can move around that much. It just looks like a little bean or something on the ultrasounds."_

"So I called my mom today," Derek said after a few moments. "What do you think about Labor Day weekend for Em's party? I know it's not her actual birthday, but since it's a three-day weekend…."

"Your mom said she would come out?" Meredith asked, practically in disbelief.

"Yeah, for the weekend, if that's ok. She wanted to book a hotel room, so I told her I'd check with you and call her back tomorrow."

"No, it's ok," Meredith assured him. "It's just really soon."

"Well, Em's birthday is in four days," Derek figured aloud. "I thought you'd want to be back at home for the party."

"I do," she replied quickly. "I guess I just didn't realize that the summer was ending so soon."

"You're not ready to go home?"

"Not really. Are you?"

"No," he admitted.

"I didn't think I would like it."

"I know. But you did?"

"It's actually kind of wonderful. Except for the puking, and the…well, at first it was like…. But yeah, for the most part…kind of wonderful. I can't believe Labor Day is in two weeks. The summer's almost over."

"We'll come back though. Next year."

"We will?"

"I think Emily's going to insist on it," Derek chuckled.

"I think I kind of maybe went a little overboard on her birthday presents," Meredith admitted softly. "Once I got there, I saw some other stuff. Did you know that toy stores are huge? Like, seriously massive. There are about a hundred aisles of pink fluffiness. And did you know that they make pretty much every real car in miniature size? And not just the Matchbox ones. There's a Cadillac that you can actually sit in and drive around. It comes with a battery."

"You bought Em a Cadillac?" he asked in disbelief.

"Derek. _I_ don't even drive a Cadillac."

"Right," he grinned. "Just checking."

"I found a princess crown though," she continued. "And they had these plates and napkins that had Cinderella on them, so I got a bunch of those. They had a Cinderella piñata too. I thought that was kinda weird."

"They had a Cinderella piñata that you could smack around with a baseball bat?" Derek asked, chuckling heartily at the thought of it.

"I know! It was too weird; I didn't get it."

"It's actually pretty funny," Derek laughed. "I mean, we could get one and keep it in the garage or something. You and I could take a few swings at it after watching that movie for the thousandth time. I think it'd make Emily a little upset though."

"Oh, just a little," Meredith replied. "I got her this doll," she continued softly. "It came with this stroller and little fake baby bottles and changes of clothes. It's pretty little. Remember when the NICU nurses told us after Em that some preemies are so small that only doll clothes fit them? This must be what they were talking about. The onesies are like big enough for a 2-pound baby. I just saw it there, and I thought Em would like it."

"You got her a doll?"

"Yeah. I know it's kind of antifeminist. Maybe it's preparing her for a life as a soccer mom. But I thought it'd be kinda good for her to have. It's not like it's a Judy doll."

"Oh God, my sisters had about a million of those growing up."

"Really? My mother never bought one for me. I can kind of see her point now, but I hated her for it at the time."

"My sisters' didn't last very long if that makes you feel any better," he said, with a hint of playfulness in his voice.

"What do you mean?"

"Mark and I may or may not have commissioned them as test subjects in our medical experiments. Did you know that you can snap a Judy doll's leg off with the right pair of pliers?"

"You snapped one of your sisters' doll's legs off?" Meredith asked, trying to stifle her laughter.

"We had to, to see what it was made of," he said defensively.

"What was it made of?"

"I have no idea. I think just rubber."

"So Judy had to live the rest of her life as an amputee because you donated her body to science?"

"Essentially, yes," he chuckled.

"Well, what I got Em isn't a Judy doll. And nobody's going to snap her doll's leg off with a pair of pliers."

"If anyone is going to do that, Em will do it herself. What else did you get?"

"Just the baseball stuff, and—oh—I found that doctor's kit. It just has little BP cuff and a stethoscope and some fake bandaids. No pliers though. And they did have those markers and the paper, so I got some of that. Plus the wrapping paper and the ribbons and stuff. I was going to look at the books, but it was getting late. Plus I told you that you could do it."

"As soon as you're both better, I'll go pick some new books for her."

"Well, I did get her one," Meredith admitted suddenly. "I saw it and it looked like it would be good. It's called 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar.' Do you know that one?"

"Yeah," he replied quietly. "It's a great book. Emily will love it."

"I did kind of go overboard. It's a lot for a three-year-old, right? I don't want to spoil her."

"A few extra presents won't spoil her. Besides, my mother's been trying to spoil Emily rotten since the day she was born. And she hasn't seen her in a year. No, a little more than a year. And you know how Mom is. If anyone's going to spoil her, she will."

"I'm sorry we didn't invite your family out for Christmas," Meredith murmured softly.

"It wasn't a good time," he nodded. "I understand."

"And your mother doesn't have to stay in a hotel," she added.

"Yes, she does," Derek replied immediately. "Mom can definitely stay in a hotel, Mer."

"It's only for the weekend, Derek. When you call her back, tell her she can stay with us. Think of it this way," she paused, and smiled at him. "We'd have a babysitter on call for the entire weekend."

"So maybe we'll be the ones in need of a hotel room. Is that what you're telling me?"

"Maybe. If you play your cards right."

He groaned playfully, flirtatiously. "How could you do this to me?"

It got quiet after that, and the exhaustion finally caught up to them, sinking them into silence. Derek ran his fingers up and down the ridges of her ribs as she settled against him. The backs of her knees cupped his kneecaps; he felt good wrapped around her. Any lingering nausea slipped away while she lay there. After a few moments in the darkness, she felt his breathing slow, but when his hand drifted down to rest on her thigh, she knew he was still awake.

"Maybe I should go check on Emily," she said aloud. She was fine. They hadn't heard a sound come from her room since they laid her in her bed. But before she and Derek fell asleep, it wouldn't hurt to just check once more. Just to be absolutely sure.

She found Emily exactly as she had expected to: blissfully asleep in her bed. The fresh sheets were still pulled up around Emily's body, and Meredith tiptoed as lightly as she could towards the bed, knowing that Emily must not have gotten into deep sleep yet. Emily lay on her stomach, with her face turned towards Meredith. Meredith watched her for a few seconds, noting that her chest rose and fell peacefully with her breathing and that her brow was not glazed in sweat. The sickness had run its course.

Derek groaned a little when she crawled back into bed, shifting the mattress underneath them. She wedged herself back into the same position she was in before she got up. His right arm draped lazily over her hip, fingers tracing her silhouette lightly for a moment, and then not at all.

"You're a good mom, Meredith," he murmured into the darkness. "You're just…," he hummed and stopped briefly before he took a breath and continued on. "It's not that I had doubts; I don't want you to think that—I knew you would be a great mother, even if you doubted yourself.—But seeing you with Em, seeing how you are with our daughter, is just…the way you hold her hands, and the way you talk to her, and the way she holds on to your hair when she sleeps in bed with you. The way you let her do that," he sighed. "And how I know she feels so safe with you. It's just," he breathed again. "I love you. So much."

"I had this sled growing up," she said after a moment, shifting in bed to face him before she continued. "I was four years old, maybe five, and my father used to take me to the middle school and pull me around on it. I guess we got a lot of snow that winter; I don't really remember. And I had this ugly yellow plaid coat that I would wear. It was actually kind of horrifying, but not the point really. But I remember thinking that it was the most fun I'd ever had. I remember thinking that my dad was the best dad in the world. But I see you and Emily together now and it's different. I remember thinking that Thatcher was fun, and I never remember thinking that he wouldn't take care of me. But I don't think I ever thought that my father just adored me. And maybe he didn't," she paused, "But it's ok. It is. Because I know that my husband adores our child. I see you talk to her and hold her. You take her fishing and you read to her. And I just know. I know that you'll be there, no matter what could happen between us. I know that nothing could ever happen that would make you leave. And no matter how sad I get, or if I try to pull away…I know that you love us enough to fight. And it's not often that I just know," she laughed a little before she grew quiet again. "I'm sorry for pulling away," she breathed finally. "I'm sorry for what I did to us."

"Me too," he replied, threading his fingers through her hair. "I'm sorry too."

"I do love you," she assured him. "And I want us to be better."

"I think we will be."

"I know you want more," Meredith whispered.

"Mer," he started, but she continued, cutting him off.

"I know you do, Derek. And I know you could do it. It's me I'm not sure about. I want us to have more. Not just more kids. More everything. But I just want," she stopped, and tried to collect herself while the rush of their life in Seattle came streaming back to her.

_Dr. Grey, we were actually just about to page you. There is a trauma en route, severe head injuries from a fall at a construction site. ETA 10 minutes._

_Oh good, you're here. Well she definitely has a temperature now, and you know, I think she might have an ear infection. She keeps pulling._

_Dr. Grey? I saw that you are assisting on the conjoined twin case. Can I scrub in? Whoa, do you need me to page someone? Dr. Shepherd, maybe?_

_We're going even if I have to call 911 to take you in an ambulance._

_I'm sorry. I can't find a heartbeat._

She took a deep breath, and when she closed her eyes, she didn't feel panic. Her world was here, safely tucked away in a tiny two-bedroom beach bungalow. She was living in one of those frothy bubbles that billowed in at the crest of a wave, like she was surrounded by the peaceful, white, foamy part of the ocean. There was a rhythm to her days here. The tide rolled in and out. Emily played and splashed and laughed harder than Meredith had ever seen her. And Derek was there. They built their own castles in the sand. They were a little messy, but they were strong. When she considered how much she liked the bubble, she could hardly believe that she had once entertained the possibility that they could drown here, and their marriage could implode on itself. The bubble was kind of…nice. And cozy, with the three of them inside. The only thing that made her kind of nervous was the thought that the sharp metal of a scalpel could pierce it.

"When we get back to Seattle, I just want to see. Get back to work and back to being us. I need to catch my breath, and then—can you wait?" she asked finally.

"You'll think about it?" he asked, in almost euphoric disbelief.

"I will," she promised.

"Then I can wait."


	12. Simple moments in the dark

_Another day, another week_ _  
_ _We'll slip back in old routines_ _  
_ _'til nights like these come in between_ _  
_ _Simple moments in the dark_ _  
_ _Ones that life can't tear apart_ _  
_ _They come along just when we need_ _  
_ _And I still hear the current of the freeway in the distance_ _  
_ _But I stop listening_ _  
_ _'Cause I know you'll stay_ _  
_ _Even though the waves are always shifting_ _  
_

* * *

Emily Shepherd liked everything about her birthday. She liked when Meredith put chocolate chips in her pancakes that morning. She liked when they let her peek at the small vanilla cake decorated in swirly pink icing flowers, covered with aluminum foil and sitting on the kitchen counter. She liked the promise of a perfect, warm, sunny day and clear blue-green water.

Emily liked being three years old. She liked birthdays. She liked all of her gifts. She liked opening them, throwing the paper across the living room, and sticking the bows on her head even more. She liked the doll, and the books, and the baseball tee.

But Emily liked the doctor kit most of all. Once she tore off the paper and realized what it was, she quickly handed the whole thing to Meredith and jumped up and down in front of her while she waited for her to open it.

"Mommy, open!" Emily cried, jittery and smiling, standing in front of Meredith while she fiddled with the box.

"I'm opening it, Em! Hold on," Meredith said, carefully peeling tape and packing material away to open the box and remove all the supplies.

"I play with this right now," Emily nodded along, taking the supplies from Meredith as she handed them to her. Emily arranged the stethoscope, reflex hammer, blood pressure cuff, and other tools one by one in a line on the floor in front of her.

"Ok," Meredith agreed. "I'm opening it as fast as I can."

"You use this at the hopsital?" Emily asked, holding the blood pressure cuff up for Meredith and Derek to see.

"Yeah, we use that," Meredith replied.

"And this too?" Emily asked, showing her something else.

"Yes, that's called a stethoscope. It listens to your heart."

"That's a stesacope?"

"Yeah," Meredith smiled.

"What's this?" Emily held up another tool.

"That looks into your eyes."

"And then the medicine makes everybody all better?"

"That's what we try to do," Meredith smiled. "Here, I'll make you look like a doctor." She motioned Emily closer, and draped the stethoscope around her neck. "This is what you can use to listen to someone's heart and make sure it's working." She clipped the pager to the waistband of Emily's shorts. "And when there's an emergency, this is how we know. It beeps and then we have to run to wherever the emergency is. And these are all our tools," she pointed to each one individually. "This one is for our ears and nose, and this one is for our knees, and this is to see if we have a fever."

"And this one is cause sometimes we get shots, right?" Emily asked, holding up a plastic needle.

"Yeah, that's right," Meredith praised. "Sometimes we need to get shots."

"Em, should Mommy and I be your patients?" Derek interjected, feeling vaguely proud that Emily was showing so much enthusiasm not only for medicine but for wanting to be like him and Meredith.

"Ok. Daddy, you and Mommy can be sick and I make it all better."

"How do you want us to be?" Derek asked, throwing himself onto the back cushions of the couch and spreading out while still sitting upright. Meredith sprawled out on the chair, following his lead. "Doctor, I don't feel very well," Derek moaned.

"I fix it all up," Emily assured him confidently. She chose the reflex hammer from the assortment on the floor and carried it over to Derek first.

"Just tap my knee with it," he instructed. "That's to see if my knees work. Just gently," he took her fist, clenched firmly around the instrument, and demonstrated once on his knee what she should do. "Like that," he said. She tapped his knee and he gave an exaggerated swing forward. Emily laughed heartily. "Try Mommy's knees too."

Emily moved back to Meredith and took a moment to assess her second patient. "Your knees aren't working good, Mommy?" she asked, positioning the hammer at Meredith's kneecap.

"I don't know. You should test them and see," Meredith encouraged. Emily smiled and wound up, turning her whole body sideways like she was ready to propel herself forward. "Wait," Meredith interjected amusedly. "You don't have to hit my knee that hard. You just have to tap it a little bit, Em. Like Daddy showed you."

Emily shrugged, and struck Meredith's left knee lightly with the hammer. Meredith swung her knee forward and Emily nodded, pleased with the results of her test.

"I sink your knees are good."

"Ok, well what about my eyes?" Meredith asked.

"I should look in there and see," Emily said excitedly as she got the hang of what she was supposed to be doing.

Meredith pointed at the opthamaloscope on the floor. "It's that yellow one right there, Em."

Emily stood to the side of the chair and, holding Meredith's face steady with her left hand, peered into her eyes as closely as she could. Her nose nearly touched Meredith's as she stared unblinking through the hole in the plastic instrument at Meredith's eyes.

"Your eyes are gray, Mommy."

"Is that a good color for them to be?"

"Yes," Emily replied approvingly. She looked down at the instrument in her hands. "And yellow is pretty too."

"There are no yellow eyes though."

"Why not?" Emily asked defensively.

"It's just not a color that eyes are. I have gray. You have blue, and Daddy has blue too."

"I look at Daddy's eyes," she said, turning to focus her attention on her father.

Derek, who had reclined on the couch, content enough to listen without fully participating, suddenly found himself called back into the game. He put on his best pretend-sick face, folded his arms across his stomach, and bent his legs at the knees. Emily was able to inspect his right eye with little trouble just by standing next to him, and though he thought that would be enough for her, he was quickly proven wrong. Emily climbed up on top of him and sat on his stomach. Her stethoscope fell off her neck and onto the floor as she inched forward and pushed his left eyelid up gently with one finger. Her face was millimeters away from his, wide-eyed and curious. Her eyes looked directly into his and he found himself holding her with one hand just to make sure she didn't unsteady herself and fall while she conducted her examination.

She had no regard for personal space, and never thought that maintaining a distance of about an inch and a half between yours and another person's faces could be uncomfortable for all involved. Emily used two fingers to gently push his eyes open, closed, and then open again.

Emily stared so close that her eyelashes touched his and Derek couldn't see anything beyond her eye. She had brilliant blue eyes. They were a perfect match for the color of the ocean on a colder day, maybe a windier day where they didn't swim as much. Clear, and deep, and staring back at him. A blue very much like his own. Indigo, not light blue.

Emily used the combination of her palm on Derek's cheek and her knees locking into his armpits to steady herself. "Hi, Daddy," she giggled, barely a breath away from him.

Derek smiled a wry, teasing, wide smile, the kind that preceded laughter by about a second or two. "Hi, Bean," he replied. "What are you doing?"

"Lookin' at your eyes."

"And are you learning a lot?" he asked. A few peals of laughter escaped before he was able to reign himself back into semi-serious again.

"Yeah." Emily laughed a little herself, feeling slightly silly as well.

Suddenly, she blew into one of his eyes and he blinked rapidly a few times, trying to recover from the brief gust of air. She backed away until she was seated upright on his upper chest.

"What was that for?" Derek chuckled.

"I just see if they close when I do it," Emily shrugged.

"You have a very interesting way of examining your patients, Dr. Shepherd."

Emily turned to Meredith. "Daddy's eyes work good."

"Oh, well that's good," Meredith replied appreciatively. "What about my blood pressure?"

"What's that?" Emily asked as she, with Derek's help, climbed off his stomach.

"It makes sure that your blood is moving the right way through your body. You use that one over there to check."

"This one?" Emily picked up the blood pressure cuff and carried it over to Meredith.

"Yes. And then you strap this part around my arm," she said, taking Emily's hands in hers and showing her what to do. "Like that, good job! And then you squeeze this part, and that tells you if my blood is ok."

Emily squeezed once, twice, three times. The needle jumped forward with every squeeze, though the cuff never got any tighter around Meredith's arm.

"Mommy, it says that you need a shot."

"Oh no, it does?" Meredith asked, her tone laced with feigned fear and horror at the very idea. "Where does it say that?"

"Right there," Emily pointed to the meter on the blood pressure cuff, which of course was printed with nothing but numbers.

"Oh, I see. You're right. I must need a shot. What about Daddy? I think he might need a shot too."

The blood pressure cuff didn't fit around Derek's arm, but Emily made it work to the best of her abilities and then made a judgment call that, yes, Derek probably did need a shot as well. She made Meredith push her sleeve up to expose her skin, and Emily spent a few seconds choosing the right spot. Before she administered her injection, she looked up at Meredith.

"Mommy, don't be scared cause sometimes we have to get shots."

"Dr. Shepherd, I don't want a shot." Meredith whined exaggeratedly, happy to play along.

Emily shook her head. "You have to be brave, Mommy," she said decidedly. "And then I give you a cool bandaid. And you can have a lollypop."

"Oh, there are lollypops?" Derek asked.

Emily looked around the room and back at the small pile of instruments on the floor. "Well, only pretend ones." She jabbed the dull plastic head of the syringe into the fleshy part of Meredith's arm, and Meredith winced for Emily's benefit. "All done, Mommy. See?"

"You're a good doctor, Dr. Shepherd. That didn't hurt very much at all. I think my husband needs a shot too though. Daddy, Em," she whispered, directing Emily back to Derek.

"Daddy, you have to get a shot too," Emily said matter-of-factly.

"Oh no, Dr. Shepherd, I don't think I need one!" Derek whined.

"Daddy, stop that," she said disapprovingly, wagging her finger at him. "Mommy was brave, so you be brave too." She turned to Meredith. "Tell him that it not hurt."

"It doesn't hurt," Meredith assured him from her place on the chair. "Dr. Shepherd is very good at giving shots."

"Ok," Derek sighed.

Emily knelt on the couch next to him. Holding the syringe in one hand, she pushed his shirt sleeve up to expose his bicep and pressed the rounded edge of the needle to his arm. When she took it away, she smoothed her fingers gently over the skin. "All done! See, Daddy?"

"You're very good at this, Dr. Shepherd. Mommy was right."

"I am the best doctor in the whole world?" Emily asked.

"Well, if genetics have anything to do with it," Derek replied. Meredith snorted in response, and rolled her eyes, and Derek's smirk dissolved into all-out laughter. "Yes, I think you're the best doctor I've ever seen, Em."

"You all done, Daddy. And Mommy."

"Wait, Dr. Shepherd, I think you forgot one thing. Your stethoscope," he said, picking it up off the floor and offering it to her.

"Ok, I do one more," she said. She took the stethoscope from him, and pressed the bottom half to his chest, mimicking what she'd seen in her past visits to the doctor. "Like this, Daddy?"

"Yeah, like that, except you have to put these in your ears," he explained as he helped her situate the stethoscope buds in her ears. "And then you listen like this," he said, pressing the bottom part to his chest. "Can you hear my heart?"

Emily shook her head no. "I not hear it, Daddy."

"What about now?" he asked, repositioning the stethoscope a little north of where it was. She shook her head again. "Ok, we'll just pretend that you can really hear it."

"What it sound like?"

"It sounds like _boom boom boom_."

"I just pretend."

"That sounds good, Dr. Shepherd. Why don't you check Mommy's too?" he suggested.

Emily rushed to the other side of the small living room and pressed the stethoscope excitedly against Meredith's chest. "I just gonna pretend I hear your heart, Mommy," she informed her.

"Ok, Dr. Shepherd."

Emily pressed the stethoscope a little harder against Meredith's chest, and then, when that wasn't enough, took the stethoscope away and pressed her ear to the same spot. Meredith cupped Emily's head with one hand, curling her fingers briefly around a tendril of her hair. She could feel her heart beating much clearer than Emily could probably hear it. It pulsed steadily, strongly, behind her ribs. In her hands. Everywhere.

"It sounds good."

"Oh, good," Meredith breathed, threading a few fingers through Emily's hair. "So what do you think? Are we healthy?" she asked.

"I sink so."

"Oh, well, that's good news," Derek grinned.

Meredith held Emily's right hand firmly in her grasp; Derek held the left. They stood in water that hit them mid-calf, warm enough that it almost looked green. Emily bobbed up and down in time with each wave, her own efforts to jump compounded by Meredith and Derek lifting her as each wave rolled in. Her pink and green one-piece bathing suit was drenched up to her chest, and her splashing had soaked Meredith and Derek pretty thoroughly as well. Droplets of water clung to the bare skin of their stomachs, and Derek had water dripping from his hair as well, the result of an earlier dive into a cresting wave.

The dull roar of the ocean muted the conversation a bit, but Emily's voice lifted enough to carry over. The sand felt grainy and fluid at the same time under Meredith's feet. She burrowed her toes in and flexed her arm as the next wave rolled in, little more than a ripple by the time it reached them, and together, she and Derek lifted Emily up, up, up. Emily shrieked delightedly and drew her legs up to her body, taking them almost fully out of the water. Her heels skimmed the top of the ocean as she swung back and forth a little before plunging back down.

"Mommy," Emily chirped breathlessly, bouncing up and down in anticipation of the wave she saw cresting a few feet towards the horizon. "Am I three years old yet?"

"Yeah, you are," Meredith replied.

Wave. Lift. Laughter. They'd been doing this for fifteen minutes already, the first thing Emily wanted to do after lunch, and she showed no signs of tiring of it. In fact, on almost every pleasant day since they'd arrived, they had done this. Emily would jump waves until she got tired, and then take one last leap into Derek's arms, and then the two of them would venture out a few feet deeper. Meredith would follow, and smile at Emily's delight when her toes dipped into the water and she reached excitedly for the horizon.

"Yay! I three years old!" Emily cried happily.

"Em, you were born in the morning, so you've already been three years old for six whole hours," Derek interjected.

"What's born?"

Wave. Swoop. Swing.

"Born is when a baby comes out of its mom's belly," Derek explained.

"I came out of you, Mommy?" she asked. In her curiosity, she forgot to make the initial spring upward, and a wave clapped her in the chest, water spattering her face. She sputtered a bit, coughed, and laughed in surprise.

"You did."

"But I not a baby anymore," Emily said seriously. She looked up at Meredith, and then to Derek, and shook her head for reassurance. She knit her eyebrows together, scrunched her nose, and pursed her lips. If she could have rolled her eyes, she would have done that too, as if to say that, for her purposes, reaching the three-year milestone was practically grasping adulthood with her fingertips.

"No, you're not," Derek replied. "When you were born, you were a baby. Now you're a big girl."

"Oh," Emily nodded.

Wave. Jump. Lift.

A particularly strong wave billowed in next, and Emily let them continue to bear her weight. When it knocked Meredith and Derek a few inches backward, it swept Emily back with them. She giggled and looked up at Meredith expectantly.

"Derek," Meredith said, still smiling down at Emily. "Switch sides with me. My shoulder is going to pop out of its socket."

The two of them changed sides, Meredith quickly taking Emily's left hand and Derek taking her right before the next wave came gently in. Emily stared ahead for a moment or two, then, puzzled, back at Meredith before settling on Derek.

"Daddy?"

"What, Bean?"

"When I got born, did you see me?" she asked, breathing heavy with the physical exertion of continuous jumping.

"What do you mean, Em?"

"I came out of Mommy's belly," she said cautiously. She watched his expression as she spoke, starting slow, like she had to get verification for every component of her question while she pieced together the story of an origin she didn't remember.

"Yes, you did."

"Were you there?" she asked. When she leapt up, Meredith and Derek backed up a foot or two so they wouldn't have to lift her as high with each wave.

"Oh," Derek laughed. "Yes, I was there."

"And you saw me?"

"I saw you."

"What did I say when I came out?" she panted.

"What do you mean, what did you say?"

"I not remember," she shrugged absently. It was a long time ago, Daddy. I'm a little fuzzy on specifics. If you could fill in the details, that'd be great.

"You didn't say anything," Derek said amusedly.

"I didn't?" she asked, the disappointment in her voice readily apparent.

"Well, newborn babies don't really talk, Em."

"Why not?" She plunged her legs back into the water, bearing all of her weight herself while she indignantly waited for an answer.

"Because they don't know how yet," he grinned good-naturedly. "When you came out, you just cried."

"Why?" she questioned again, perpetually curious.

"That's what babies do. But we wanted you to cry because that meant your lungs were strong."

"Oh."

Wave. Jump. Lift.

Emily's hair clung to her forehead and neck in wet tendrils. Her cheeks were flushed in a combination of physical exertion and a lingering sunkiss. She looked older than she did when they first arrived. She was tanned, even slightly freckled across her cheeks, and some of the roundness and chubbiness—the babyishness—of her facial features had angled out. She talked more, articulated herself more clearly, and asked a million more questions.

"You talked to me though?"

"Mommy and I both talked to you."

"What did you say?"

Emily's birth was a strange dichotomy for Derek of both remembering everything and remembering absolutely nothing. He had little to no recollection of details; three years later, the event still remained more of an emotional blur than anything else. He didn't remember the name of the doctor who delivered Emily. The only reason he still knew how long labor had lasted and how long Meredith had pushed was because Meredith reminded him anytime he ever showed a hint of forgetfulness. He didn't remember the room number or what he was wearing that day and he probably wouldn't have cared to remember what hospital it all happened in if it wasn't Seattle Grace. And he didn't remember what his first words to Emily had been.

All he really remembered was a twinge of fear, and a great sense of responsibility, but mostly overwhelming joy that washed over him and swept away absolutely everything else. He remembered that a nurse had placed her in his arms, swaddled tightly in a white blanket with a tiny pink knit hat. She was littler than he thought she would be, littler than what he remembered his nieces and nephews to feel like when they settled into his arms for the first time. She had wispy dark hair, which seemed to have gotten a little lighter every day since, until now when it was almost blonde, and striking blue eyes. He didn't remember what he said aloud to her; all he could remember was what he thought in his head—a leaping, bounding chorus of 'You are mine.' The nurses had the oxygen ready for Emily, but she hadn't needed it. Emily screamed and screamed, a feisty month-early five-pounder, and didn't settle until Derek said whatever he had said to her.

Wave. Jump. Joy.

"The first time he held you, he said, 'Hi, Bean,'" Meredith told Emily for him.

"That's all?" Emily asked.

"And he said 'It's Daddy.' And then you stopped crying."

Emily looked up at him and simply laughed. "Daddy, you're silly. I know you are my Daddy."

She jumped once more, leaping into the air with the combined effort from the three of them, and laughing sank back down into the water. When she finished, she reached for Derek with both hands and he swept her up into his arms before the next wave was any bigger than a ripple. "I done jumping."

Emily didn't want it to end. The entire day had been so wonderful, so full of play and sugar and pure bliss that she could hardly stand it. She ate the icing flower, and only the icing flower, off of her piece of cake, after she had blown out three candles with gusto and clapped heartily for herself. Throughout the course of the day, she had played with all of her new toys at least once, and before bed, the three of them had read all of her new books together.

Now, while Derek read the last few lines of the third book, Meredith perched on the end of Emily's bed and settled her back onto her pillow. While Meredith rubbed her back somewhat absentmindedly, Emily's eyes slipped closed once, then twice, before she opened them again and looked at her parents.

"Em, did you have a good birthday?" Derek asked.

She nodded, and adjusted her position under the covers when Derek picked up Bear from the floor and offered him to Emily. She took the toy into her arms, gripping it tightly between her forearm and chest. Her eyes slipped closed again, and this time, she didn't open them.

With a lazy smile on her face, Emily reached for Meredith's hand. "Mommy, when am I gonna be four?" she asked sleepily.

"Not for awhile, Em," Meredith replied softly.

"Oh," Emily breathed.

"Three's a good age to be. I think you should just be three for awhile," Meredith said.

"Ok, I will, Mommy," Emily whispered back.

"I'll see you in the morning, ok?"

Emily barely murmured a response, and with a kiss each from Meredith and Derek, curled up tightly around Bear under her covers. Meredith eased herself gently off the bed, and followed Derek out of the room.

"When are we telling Emily that we have to go home?" Derek asked softly as he pulled the door closed behind him.

"The day before we leave?" Meredith offered.

"You want to wait that long?"

"Let's let her have a few more days," Meredith murmured. "She's not going to be happy about leaving."

"I don't think she thinks we're are leaving," he replied.

"She doesn't," Meredith agreed. "I think she's fine with that."

"She might find regular life slightly disappointing after this," he acknowledged.

"Yeah," she murmured. "Maybe."

Downstairs, they went immediately to the kitchen. Derek started on the dessert plates sitting in the sink, which still had bits of cake and icing stuck to them. Turning on the water, he ran it first over his hand and then directly onto the plates, and started scrubbing.

"I will say this: I'll be happy to get back to a house with a dishwasher," he said.

"Yeah, that will be nice," Meredith replied laughingly. She busied herself with tidying the living room, putting all of Emily's new doctor instruments back into the bag and then going to the back door to bring the baseball tee and bat onto the porch. Once she was back in the house, she turned to Derek. "I'll call the Chief tomorrow, tell him we'll be back at work that Monday, I guess," she said. "How long was your mother planning on staying?"

"I think just until Monday morning," Derek answered. He started to put some of the clean dishes back into the cabinet. Turned toward Meredith, he continued his train of thought. "She watches Maggie's boys while Maggie teaches so she wanted to be back after Labor Day."

"Ok," Meredith replied, gathering up some crayons and scrap paper that Emily had doodled on and stacking it on the kitchen counter for the next day. She smiled, looking at the picture Emily drew. Earlier that night, she had explained it to Meredith. The squiggly line in the middle separated the sand from the water. The sand half of the page was left plain white; it differentiated from the ocean half, which was identified by some random shaky lines. The sun, a circle with lines of varying lengths stemming from it, sat in the top left corner of the page. "I'm glad she's coming out," Meredith continued. "Em's changed so much since the last time she saw her."

"I am too," Derek replied. "I mean, Mom knows that she speaks well, just from talking to her on the phone, but Em's just…," he trailed off, sighing. "Mom will just have to see her. She's curious about everything, and she's smart, and she's funny."

"Yeah, well maybe Em will dazzle your mother with her medical skills too now," Meredith teased.

"Oh, I think she will," he countered right back. "Mom is hard to impress, but fortunately, our daughter is rather remarkable."

"Your mom isn't that hard to impress. She likes me." Meredith said confidently, waiting for Derek to sort and put away the last few freshly-cleaned utensils.

Derek couldn't contest that. What had started out as a slightly strained, awkward meeting over Christmas of the second year they were together—well, the first year they were together without Addison in the picture, he amended himself—had blossomed into a sort of friendship. He had been worried about it initially; his family loved Addison so much, almost as much as they loved Mark. But his mother, once she'd had time to come to terms with the divorce and realize that Meredith wasn't the cause of it, had taken to her. It wasn't so much of a mother-daughter relationship like it had been with Addison; Meredith didn't want that. But it was much more than the cordiality Derek had expected it to be. Mary Shepherd called every Sunday, mostly to talk to Emily, but also for Derek, and if Meredith happened to be the one to answer the phone, they had been known to talk for almost a half hour sometimes. If there was a question about Emily—how to alleviate the pain caused by teething, how and where to hide Christmas presents so that Emily and Derek wouldn't find them, how to show Emily that flushing the toilet wasn't scary—Mary's number was the first one Meredith dialed.

"Yes, well, you are rather remarkable too," he smirked. He swept some crumbs off the counter and into the sink, and then, his expression softened into a tender smile, and he sighed. "TV?"

In the living room, they put the television on low, but neither was watching the hurried political analysis with the ticker scrolling rapidly by at the bottom of the screen. Instead, Meredith curled into Derek's arms. She bent her legs and drew them up towards her body, rested her head on his chest, and while one hand was scrunched between their bodies, the other fingered the hem of his t-shirt, and occasionally a finger or two sneaked up and under and brushed against his stomach. He wrapped one of his arms around her back, laying his palm flat on her hip. The other stretched across his lap with his hand coming to rest on her upper thigh. Both of them reclined back towards the corner of the couch, with Meredith closer to the back. She closed her eyes for a moment and pictured herself reaching forward for something that felt so real, so tangible—something that felt a lot like happiness, if not pure bliss.

She looked around the living room. She'd gotten it mostly back in order after Emily had gone to bed, dragging the toys into the corners though she knew that they'd be strewn all over the room again the next day. She'd also started to gather some things that needed to be packed up: some movies, books they were finished reading, throw blankets that they didn't really need to have out anymore. And a few shells that Emily had collected during almost daily walks on the beach. Three white clam shells of varying sizes, one with a noticeable chip on the side, the black mussel shells still joined together, the piece of greenish sea glass, and the pink shell Emily picked up on their first full day at the house. It seemed so long ago, and looking back, Derek holding her the way he was now seemed like something totally beyond them at that point. All of these things sat in a pile on the coffee table, waiting to be put in a box and taken back to Seattle within the next few days.

"Derek?" she murmured. "We'll come back next year, right?"

"We will," he replied softly, but emphatically. "We can put in for time off next summer as soon as we get back if you want."

"Yeah," she said. "That would be good."

The television cast a blue light over the darkened room. From what Meredith could gather through only paying attention to the broadcast halfheartedly, some politician had done something incredibly stupid, or maybe just controversial and one of the analysts thought it was stupid—it was hard to say—leaving three very austere-looking individuals to duke it out all night. Meredith didn't really care.

"I'll call Brenda tomorrow to let her know when Emily will be back at daycare."

"Back to regular life," Meredith sighed.

"Back to regular life," he agreed noncommittally.

"Maybe I'll get a DBS case or a cordotomy or something to welcome me back," she said suddenly, with a little more gusto, like she suddenly remembered the high of standing over the surgical table, scalpel in hand, knowing that she knew how to fix the problems she was about to be confronted with.

"You sound like Cristina."

"You know, it's weird. For the past five years, I haven't gone more than a day or two without seeing her, and here it's been almost three months," she said. "I haven't really thought about how long that is until now. Well, I did before we left, but, you know, not as much since we got here. Not at all, really. Sometimes I can't believe we were away for this long."

"You miss her," Derek noted.

"Yeah, I do. And the surgeries. It'll be nice to get back to work."

"It will."

"I haven't held a scalpel in three months," she marveled, not really to Derek in particular, but more to just the empty space in front of her.

"It will be good to get back to work," he reiterated.

"Yeah, it will," she agreed. "I'm ready to get back," she told herself as much as she told him.

They got quiet for awhile after that. Derek shifted until he was more flat on his back on the couch, though Meredith was still on her side, wedged between his body and the back of the couch. Her arm slung directly across his stomach, just a little above his belly button now.

"I think she had a good day," Meredith murmured into the darkness a minute or two later.

"Yeah, I think she did," he mumbled sleepily back, hands roaming over her bare arms and down across her back.

"Did you ever notice," she asked, "That Emily does this thing when she first wakes up from her nap, how she holds her ear when you go in and get her?"

Derek pursed his lips and nodded. ""Mmmhmm."

"When I first saw her doing it, I thought she had another ear infection, but she never cried or seemed sick or anything and then I just realized that she only does it for a couple minutes when she first wakes up."

"Not the cartilage, just like this on her earlobe," he demonstrated, rubbing his right earlobe with his thumb and index finger.

"Yeah," Meredith looked up to see what he was doing and nodded. "Exactly. Just for a minute or two when she first wakes up and she doesn't want to talk yet."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Has she always done that?"

Meredith didn't answer right away. Instead, she gripped the fabric of his t-shirt, curling her fingers around the hem and brushing her knuckles lightly against the stretch of skin under his belly button. The cool, damp night air drifted in through the open window, and she nudged her bare knees slightly under his for warmth. Somehow, as June gave way to July and then August, this house had gone from the most daunting place she could think of to be to the only place where she felt safe. The operating room no longer felt like the welcome haven that it used to feel like. There was no promise of the thrill of an adrenaline rush she could handle and a surgery properly navigated.

Wrapped up in Derek's arms, she finally felt confident about something that she didn't learn from a book. She knew this now; she knew what this was and how much it meant, and she was just as sure as if she had read about it in a textbook.

This is a family.

This thing, right here—this thing between us—this is a marriage.

"I don't want to go back," she said suddenly.

Derek glanced downward and frowned. "You just said you couldn't wait to have a scalpel in your hand again."

"No, I can't," she said, hurrying the words out quickly. Ten blade. Slice. Suture. Stitch. Her heart started to pound in anticipation at just the thought of standing over that table. The awesome responsibility that comes with holding a scalpel. The trust a patient puts in a doctor, the confidence they have that their doctor knows. The calm in the doctor's mind that they do know, because they've taken the time to understand. They've done the tests and the x-rays and the CT scans and they have learned the patient, and now they know, and what's more, they are sure of their own ability to weather a storm.

"It's just…Emily," Meredith exhaled quietly. "She rubs her ear when she wakes up from her nap. It's just this little thing, and now I know it. I know her so well," she continued quickly, something proud yet also tired and emotional tinting her every word. "And you," she finished.

"I don't have any nervous habits."

"Yes, you do," she teased, so surely. "You do that little laugh thing when you think something's funny. Or you think you're being funny. Not a snort, but just a little laugh. Right after someone says something, or at the end of your sentences."

"Oh, so just enough so that I come off as an ass?"

"Yes."

"I don't buy it," he said, making a conscious effort not to do the very thing she had just described.

"You totally do it," she smirked. "Deal with it."

"Can you fault me for being charming?" he asked playfully.

"Oh, so you're charming now?"

"At the very least, I'm alluring."

She tilted her head up, just enough so he could see it when she rolled her eyes. Knocking his ego down a peg or two was more difficult when she couldn't keep an amused smile off her face though. He pressed on.

"Engaging?"

"Fine," she conceded. "You have an engaging personality, Derek."

"That's all I'm saying," he grinned smugly.

They sank back into a comfortable silence. Derek adjusted his position on the couch slightly, and Meredith sank a little deeper into his embrace. She could feel his pulse radiating through his body as she rested her head on his chest. So safe. So safe. So safe.

"Derek," she whispered.

"Meredith."

"What happens when we go back?"

"Well," he sighed, and cleared his throat a bit. "You and I will go back to being brilliant surgeons. Emily will go back to being the belle of the ball at Seattle Grace daycare. We'll go back to the house and back to the hospital, and have the rest of our lives."

"Just like that?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah," he said. "Just like that."

She sat up, and in doing so, forced him to do the same. She sat on the couch, facing him with one leg bent under and her foot tucked under the opposite thigh. "What about us?" she demanded.

"We're getting better," he offered soothingly. "Right?"

"We are."

He placed a hand on her knee, rubbing her kneecap in small circles with his thumb. He looked right up at her, his blue eyes meeting her gray ones despite the darkened room. "Why don't you have faith?" he asked, point blank, with a noticeable frustration.

"Why _do_ you have faith?" She phrased the question like an accusation. Why do you get to know and I don't?

"Because you're you, and I'm me," he breathed simply. He really believed in it. Wholeheartedly, unabashedly, Derek believed that love was enough. Maybe not always, maybe not before, but certainly now. His confidence staggered her, dazzled her, confused her to her very core.

"Exactly," she sighed.

"That's supposed to be a good thing," he countered.

"No, it's not," she cried, trying to calm herself but failing entirely. "Because you're you. You're Derek Shepherd. You're the Head of Neurosurgery. You have the mother that's going to come out here from across the country for just a weekend so she can see our daughter. You're you, and I'm me."

"Your mother would have loved Emily too," he tried to comfort her. He reached out and touched her face just for a moment. "She would have been there."

Meredith shook her head. "Maybe. But she would have taken me aside and asked me what the hell I was thinking going and getting pregnant. She wouldn't have been happy or excited, Derek. All she would have been able to talk about was how hard it would be, and how I had no idea what raising a child was like, and how a baby would complicate everything I had worked for. Not even seeing how unbelievable Emily is would have been enough to change my mother's mind from thinking she was a bad idea."

"Meredith," he interjected calmly, gently, but she continued on almost frantically, alternating between looking past him and looking at him.

"And I start my fellowship soon. Well not _soon_ soon. But applying _soon_ soon. And I just," she paused to catch her breath and collect her thoughts before she got to the heart of the matter. "I promised Emily, Derek."

"You promised her what?"

"That I would always try," she whispered.

"How is that not going to be enough?" he asked, trying every way he could to communicate comfort. He grasped her hand in his, smiled, encouraged by tone and by the very specific way he squeezed her hand and inched closer to her. _I chose wrong._ Love is enough.

"I don't know," she replied helplessly. "But sometimes it's not."

"We understand each other better," he urged, like he was trying his best to counteract the unraveling of the faith they had so precariously built together, like a sandcastle on the beach. Wave after wave of doubt lapped at the base of it, and she searched his face frantically, trying to believe that if they dug around the castle fast enough, and deep enough, they could protect it from one wave that was stronger than all the others that would knock down everything they'd built in an instant. "We are better," he promised. "It's different now."

"How much of it is because we're really better?" she demanded again. _Show me something. Give me a reason to believe._ "What if it's just because we're here, and we're focusing, and we are trying to fix this without anything getting in the way?"

He smiled, and took a step back, pausing for a second before he continued in relentless pursuit of securing her certainty. "We can focus at home too," he hinted flirtatiously. "When we get back to Seattle, I'd be willing to go back to our on-call room dates. You know, for the sake of our marriage," he added hastily. "Sex. Witty discussions."

Her expression changed, and some of the worry melted away for a moment. She smiled. "I believe we called it sex and mockery."

"Ah, yes, sex and mockery," he sighed, laughing a little. "I would be in favor of resuming those activities. Maybe not so much the mockery, but the sex, yes."

"Oh I bet you would be."

"I'm just trying to be here for you."

"Through sex in on-call rooms?"

"Oh yes," he smirked.

The whole thing had lasted just a few seconds, and through that short exchange of flirting, she had allowed herself to believe that everything would be all right. Her confidence came rushing back—both the surgical and the domestic—for one fleeting moment. Derek said "somehow" and for an instant, it seemed so blissfully possible. Here is our life spread out before us. All of this is ours to have and to hold. But then it slipped away.

"Derek, this isn't real life," she said softly, almost ashamed to be the bearer of bad news.

"No," he agreed. "Not really."

"Do you think I'll be able to pick Emily up from school sometimes? I mean, not now, obviously. She doesn't even go to school. But you know, when the time comes?"

He looked at her, sympathy twisting his expression into something between a frown and a smile, watering his eyes, and softening his gaze. "Meredith," he murmured, and moved closer to her. His fingertips brushed against her cheek. "Yeah, you will," he said finally, the word as sure as a promise. "Meredith, I didn't go into this thinking that everything was going to be perfect. And maybe I am surer than you are, and I don't know why—because you're right, maybe there is no reason to be sure and a million reasons not to be—but I believe. So I think you should believe too. Have faith."

She nodded, and leaned in closer. He brushed a lock of hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear, then leaned in a little closer himself.

When their lips met, every worry of home slowly started to melt away. Maybe this beach house wasn't really home, but neither was their house in Seattle. This was home—Derek touching her, easing her mouth open with the pad of his thumb, as good as swearing to her that even though he didn't know, he would make it happen for them.

His hand went back to her hair. Hers went to his chest. She could feel his heart beating again. So safe. So safe. So safe.

As they sunk into it, Meredith couldn't help but feel like even though they had never been apart longer than the duration of a night spent on-call at the hospital, he had been gone for a very long time. He threaded his fingers through her hair, massaged her tongue with his, never broke away for a second. It was like she had settled into a life of complacency, of quiet loss and uncertain waiting, and as he touched her, it was like she saw him again, coming around the bend and walking right up to her door. She smiled into the kiss. Welcome home.

Still, the question of _how_ pounded at her like a stubborn headache. She was the one who finally broke the kiss, and, breathless and slightly flushed, whispered his name.

"Meredith," Derek stopped her before she could say anything else. "Do you love me?"

She looked into his eyes. Yes. Of course I do. I finally understand how much. It's too much for me to ever tell you the whole of it. _It's intense, this thing I have._ That's why I'm so scared. "I do," she said. "Do you love me?"

"I do." He hummed a little, and nodded. "That's it, then," he said aloud for both of their benefits. Cocking his head to the left just a little, he sighed, and a slow, tender smile spread across his face. He reached out and traced over her cheek, her lips, her collar bone, once more. Taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then looked like he changed his mind just before the words slipped out. He nodded again, only slightly so that the gesture was barely a gesture at all, and whispered to her, "I missed you so much."


	13. This little patch of green

_Well, the sun's not so hot in the sky today  
And you know I can see summertime slipping on away  
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red  
But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed  
So I'll be king and you'll be queen  
Our kingdom's gonna be this little patch of green_

* * *

Meredith and Derek squeezed every last second of time out of that house. Though they were supposed to leave the Wednesday before Labor Day, a plan that would allow them to get settled back in at home for a few days before going back to work, they didn't actually leave until late Friday night, and even then, only because Mary Shepherd's flight was arriving at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 11 AM the next morning.

They had tried to talk to Emily in the two days preceding their departure, tried to explain why they were cleaning the house and why they were putting all of their clothes in suitcases. She had appeared to take the news right in stride; after Meredith and Derek finished talking to her, she went back to playing with her doll, seemingly unbothered.

After dinner, they loaded everything into the car, took Emily by the hand, and literally said goodbye to both the house and the beach. They strapped Emily, already in her pajamas, into her car seat, and wistfully drove away. After all of that, Emily had done better than they expected. There were a few tears for the first fifteen minutes or so of the drive to Seattle, but nothing like the tantrum they were expecting. Eventually, about an hour into the trip, she fell asleep.

Pulling into their driveway late that night was slightly disconcerting. It felt strangely familiar, like they had just been there that morning and were simply returning home from work, and completely foreign, like they had never been there before.

Derek turned off the engine and, stepping out of the car, he looked up at the house. Everything about it was exactly what he wanted. Exactly. He had made sure of that, painstakingly going over the plans with the architect and then supervising the building process every step of the way. He had had the idea in his mind for months, once he realized that Meredith was it for him, but the idea went from an abstraction, merely a plan for the future, to a necessitated reality when Meredith found out she was pregnant. He was on the phone with the contractor the next day, asking for an estimate on when they could get the house built and ready to live in. They moved in a month before Emily was born.

He felt a vague sense of déjà vu as Meredith stepped out of the passenger seat, stretched a little, and went to the back door.

"I got her," he said.

He reached in and unbuckled Emily, easing her gently into his arms. She mumbled a few nonsense words at the disturbance, and nestled her body closer to him until she was flush against his chest. He carried her up the four steps from the driveway to the wrap-around porch and then followed Meredith inside.

"Daddy," Emily whined, picking her head up and looking around the darkened foyer.

"Shh, go back to sleep, Bean," he soothed, his hand immediately on her back and rubbing in slow circles.

"Daddy," she repeated, more alert this time. Her voice broke on the last syllable of Derek's name.

"It's ok," Meredith murmured. She turned the lights on, illuminating the first floor of the house, and then went to Emily. Standing at Derek's side, she smiled at her daughter, brushed her fingertips over Emily's cheek, and repeated, "It's ok."

Tears rolled down Emily's cheeks as she continued to take in her surroundings. Derek walked her around the living room for a few moments, trying to calm her down, trying to give her a few minutes to recognize home.

"Where is this?" Emily asked. She dissolved into intermittent sobbing, looking around at the house while Derek held her. The fireplace with the stone mantle, the cushy wine-colored sofa that Meredith had chosen, the armchair that went with it and the floor lamp positioned right next to it. He couldn't see Emily's face, but truth be told, the house felt almost unfamiliar to him as well.

"Em, we're at home," he told her gently.

"No, we not," she cried.

"Yeah, Em," Meredith said. "Remember how we said we were going to go home?"

"No," Emily sobbed. Derek shifted her weight in his arms, held her a little closer as they stood in the middle of the living room together. He knew Emily remembered talking about it. Maybe she didn't understand what they were trying to tell her, but the way she looked around for a moment, and then shook her head defiantly before laying it back down on Derek's shoulder, made Derek think that she understood what they had been saying but had started to associate home with the other house. In the dark, just waking up from sleep, this place—though she had taken her first steps barely three feet from where they were standing right now, though they had read books together on that couch every night—seemed totally unfamiliar. No meant 'I do not remember.'

"When the summer is over, we have to go home," Derek reminded her, heading towards the stairs.

"I'll be right there," Meredith interjected, catching Derek's eye and motioning towards the front door.

Derek nodded and carried Emily upstairs, down the hallway and towards her bedroom. They passed two closed doors on the left, the spare rooms, and the bathroom on the right. The master bedroom was at the end of the hall; Emily's room was right next to it.

"No, Daddy," Emily sobbed as Derek opened the door and flicked the light switch on.

Izzie had wanted to plan for this room immediately after Meredith told her she was pregnant; Cristina spent most of Meredith's pregnancy making fun of Izzie. Meredith took more of a middle ground. At first, she was going to let Izzie spearhead the project. Exhausted by the pressing demands of both residency and pregnancy, she let Izzie show her paint chips and fabric swatches and pictures of cribs for nearly a week before she snapped. When Meredith stormed in to her mother's house that night, Derek was already there, reading a book on the couch. She flew into the kitchen in a rage and came back with the binder that Izzie had started to put together for the project, slamming it down on the coffee table. No more delegating, she had said fiercely. And then she softened. Help me pick the color of the baby's room.

They chose yellow. Not a bright yellow, not even the color of a banana, but more of a light, frothy yellow, with white crown molding and hardwood floors. The white crib and changing table were in the spare room now, and a small white four-poster bed and matching dresser had taken their place. Books were jammed into all three shelves of the bookcase in the corner, and the miniature round white table with two matching chairs were exactly where they had left them in the corner opposite the bookcase.

"See, Em, this is your room. Don't be scared; we're at our house."

Emily looked around. "No," still broken and tear-soaked, changed from 'I do not remember' to 'This isn't home.'

"Do you have to go potty before bed?" Derek asked, pulling back the sheets laying Emily down in her bed.

"No," Emily replied, crying like it was the only word she knew.

"I think you should go back to sleep," Derek said softly, taking a seat on the edge of her bed. "And then guess who is going to come see you tomorrow? Nana."

"Nana comes to see me?" she asked.

"Yeah, she's coming to our house to see you for your birthday tomorrow."

"Cause of I am three?" she whimpered.

"Yeah, she wanted to see you," he smiled tenderly. "And guess who else is going to come see you? Izzie. And Cristina."

"Cwistina?'

"Yeah, but not until tomorrow, so we have to go to sleep to get to the morning."

"No, Daddy," she said as she squeezed a few tears out and took a big, hiccupping breath.

"Hey, Em," Meredith said, sliding quietly into the room. "Hey, don't be scared," she smiled, taking a seat on Emily's bed next to her pillow. "I brought Bear. Would that help?"

Emily nodded and gratefully accepted the toy from Meredith.

"Why, Mommy?" she asked as she looked around.

"It's just not summer anymore," Meredith replied. She leaned down and kissed the top of Emily's head. "It was time to go home."

"No, Mommy," Emily cried.

"I know, Em."

"Tomorrow, we can take a walk down to the lake," Derek offered. "How does that sound?"

Emily nodded.

"But we have to go to sleep first, ok?" he added.

Emily hesitated briefly and nodded again. "Mommy," she sighed, her voice breaking again.

"I know," Meredith countered, rubbing Emily's back, repeating those words again and again, trying to lull her to sleep. "I know," she said once more, looking up at Derek and giving him a smile.

A few hours later, after they had gotten Emily to sleep, after all the bags had been brought into the house, Meredith and Derek crawled into their own bed. Derek, with his arms wrapped around Meredith and his chin on her shoulder, drifted blissfully towards sleep with the scent of lavender all around him.

His mother would be here in the morning. She'd seen the house only one time, just after Emily was born, right when they were getting settled in. He'd been so proud when he picked her up from the airport, pulled into the drive with her in the passenger seat. This is it, he'd said. She'd smiled then, but it was nothing like the expression she had on her face when he scooped Emily out of her bassinet and placed the baby in her arms.

His mother had seen Emily several more times since then: Christmas a few months later, when he and Meredith took Emily to Connecticut to show her off to the rest of Derek's family, and the Christmas the next year too. Once more for Emily's first birthday, and once for a long weekend in the early spring of the following year. She was supposed to fly out last year too, for Emily's birthday again, but coming so close on the heels of the miscarriage, neither Derek nor Meredith were up to seeing anyone. And Christmas. They'd made plans to have her, along with his sisters and their husbands and children, come out to Seattle for Christmas as well, thinking that Meredith would be too pregnant to fly by then. Instead, the three of them spent a quiet Christmas alone while Derek's family remained in Connecticut.

She'd be here in the morning though. To see the house, and to see Emily, and to see him and Meredith together. There was the déjà vu again.

He felt the same now as he did when he brought her here for the first time. Happy. Proud.

Look at what we've built, Meredith and I.

Just before he was about to sink into sleep, he heard the bedroom door swing open and Emily's bare feet pad across the floor.

"Mommy," Emily choked out tearfully, tugging on the blankets around Meredith and then at Meredith's shirt.

Derek opened his eyes, and propped himself up with one elbow. "Bean," he sighed sympathetically.

Meredith barely woke, just enough to open her eyes and see Emily standing in front of her. She reached forward and gripped Emily with both hands, just under her armpits, and lifted her up onto the bed. Emily situated herself flush against Meredith's body, and Derek reached over Meredith's body to touch her face. Meredith held Emily close, kissed her face and then her hair, before settling her hands on Emily's back. She pursed her lips together and hummed for a second, first for Emily and then, when Derek sank back down onto the pillows and slung his arm back over her waist, almost blissfully for herself.

The next morning, Derek sat on a bench in the baggage claim area of SeaTac, his eyes focused on the escalators spilling people into the long hallway of conveyor belts. The monitor had indicated that the flight from JFK International had arrived on time and that bags would begin to be unloaded shortly on conveyor belts D and E, but there was no sign of his mother yet.

He pushed his hair back with both hands and yawned. Waking up a few hours before had been slightly disconcerting; with no ocean outside to drown out any noise and a restless toddler sharing the bed with him and Meredith, it took him a moment or two to remember where he was exactly. Home. Back in Seattle. Following a quick breakfast of leftover granola bars, they'd taken Emily on a walk down to the lake to relearn the land, redefine home. Afterward, he left to pick up his mother at the airport, and Meredith took Emily to the supermarket to get some groceries. They tried to time it so they'd be home at the same time.

He scanned over the crowds of people billowing into baggage claim by the plane-load and his eye caught on a trim older woman, weaving her way through the crowds with determined ease, purse slung over her shoulder and every step sure. Her dark gray hair, still slightly reminiscent of the black it used to be, was pulled back into a tight bun. Her mulberry-colored cardigan sweater and tan slacks remained thoroughly unmussed and perfectly pressed, despite a cross-country flight, and her sensible black shoes with low heels clicked rapidly across the tile floor. She kept her left hand on her purse, and a small diamond ring sparkled on her ring finger.

"Mom," Derek called, rising quickly from the bench against the corridor's far wall. "Mom!"

"Derek," the woman replied, whipping her head around and smiling as recognition flickered across her face.

Mary Shepherd reached for her son, first pulling him down a bit for a kiss on the cheek, then wrapping him in her arms for a hug. Derek had been the tallest in his family since he was sixteen years old and a growth spurt shot him up a few inches taller than his mother and all four of his sisters. She squeezed him and patted his back a few times before she took a step back and looked at him.

"Derek, look at you! You're tan!" she exclaimed. Her voice was honeyed and rich, each word affectionate.

"Three months at the beach will do that to you, Mom," he grinned. "How was your flight?"

"Oh, it was fine. Where's the baby?" Mary asked, looking around. "You didn't bring her?"

"She's out with Meredith getting some groceries. She was up early this morning so Meredith wanted to get her home early enough to nap before everyone got here," he explained. "She didn't sleep much last night."

"Oh, is she sick?"

"No, no, she's fine," Derek assured her as they walked toward the conveyor belts as suitcases started to spill onto them. "She wasn't thrilled to be back at home, that's all. I think it was just dark, it was late, and she was already tired when we got home last night. She didn't really recognize the house. She was better this morning though."

"Poor thing," Mary tsked sympathetically. "From what you told me, she had a great summer."

"She loved it. You should have seen her, Mom. She had us in the water every day."

"Reminds me of a little boy I used to know with a certain fondness for testing his limits," she said fondly. She grabbed at Derek's arm and pointed to a small navy suitcase slowly making its way around the conveyor belt. "That's my bag, Derek."

He reached forward and pulled the suitcase off the belt, standing it upright and extending the handle. "Did you have anything else?" he asked.

"No, just that suitcase and my purse."

"Ok, I'm parked not too far from here," Derek said, guiding Mary towards the exit. At the car, he loaded Mary's suitcase into the backseat, and opened the passenger door for her.

"How are the girls?" he asked as they started the drive home.

"Oh, everyone's doing well," Mary began with a flourish. "Kathleen, Jerry, and the kids just got back from the Cape. Everybody goes back to school this week so all the kids are getting a bit crazy. I think Maggie most of all though. And Ian's cutting his molars so Anne and Kevin are a little tired. But everyone's doing well. I've been told to bring back more pictures of Emily," she added abruptly, teasingly. "Apparently you're not sending them enough."

"Meredith was going to get the pictures from the beach house printed while they were out this morning," he smiled, his eyes still on the road in front of him. "I'll call her and tell her to get some doubles."

"Wonderful," Mary nodded, before rolling her eyes. "You know I'll never hear the end of it, Derek."

"Oh, I know, Mom. Let me call her right now. Can you pass me my phone?" She handed him his cell phone and he dialed Meredith's number.

Meredith answered after the second ring, before the third, and he asked, "Hey, did you order the pictures yet?"

"No," she replied. "Why?"

He could hear Emily singing a nonsense song to herself in the background. He pictured her sitting in the cart, swinging her legs gently back and forth, eating a piece of cheese from the deli counter or a chocolate chip cookie from the bakery. He smiled. "Can you get some extras made up to send home with Mom?"

"Yeah, I'll get some," Meredith agreed. "Five of each?"

"Yeah, one for Mom and one each for my sisters."

"Ok. Did your mother's flight get in all right?"

"Yeah, everything's fine," he assured her. "We're on our way home now. How's Emily?"

"She's good, she's sitting here singing."

"Yeah, I can hear her," he chuckled. "Ok, well we'll see you when you get home then."

They said goodbye, and he hung up and dumped the phone into one of his cup-holders.

"Meredith said she'd get extras for you. When you talk to Nancy later, you can tell her she can sleep easy tonight," he said.

"How is Meredith?" Mary asked.

"Better," Derek answered after a brief hesitation, feeling his mother's eyes on him as he drove. "We're both better. I think we are. We go back to work on Tuesday."

"It'll be nice to get back to the hospital, I imagine," she said, trailing off, waiting for him to respond.

Derek knew that his mother was a master conversationalist. It was a long-running family joke that Mary Shepherd could ask two questions and get someone's life story out of them. People always just seemed to want to talk to her, to open up to her. Maybe it was partly due to the fact that, widowed at thirty-six and left to raise five children alone, her family looked to her as someone who should possess some inordinate wisdom as a rule. Her children had certainly come to her for advice plenty of times through the years, maybe Derek most of all.

Derek couldn't really remember if she'd been that way before his father's death, but certainly afterward, she had a way of making him see the truths of his own life when he either couldn't or wouldn't see them before. During the times in his life when he called infrequently, it wasn't that he was avoiding his mother, or being a bad son; rather, it was that he was avoiding himself and all the things that his mother would simply make him see before he even realized what was happening. That first year in Seattle, the one mostly spent trying to piece things back together with Addison while all the while aching for Meredith, and most of this past year, the one spent at first too sad and too tired to stop Meredith from slipping through his fingers and then too scared that his distance had once again done irreparable damage to his marriage—he'd never talked to his mother less in his entire life.

"Yeah, I think it will," he replied. "Meredith was saying the other night that she was hoping for some great case as a welcome back."

"And what will you do with Emily?" his mother asked.

"The daycare at the hospital knows she'll be back on Tuesday full-time. She's been there since she was eight weeks old, so she'll be fine," he assured her confidently. "Brenda, the woman who runs the place—Emily loves her."

"It's wonderful that you have a place where you can leave her and know that she's safe and happy."

"Yeah," he agreed, "We love having her right in the hospital."

He grew quiet, changing lanes and weaving through traffic on the highway with skill and precision. He swallowed when he felt his mother watching him again. He glanced over at her, and when he saw her smiling, he couldn't help but return the gesture.

"You did good, Derek," she said proudly.

He nodded, the gesture so small it was barely anything. They'd done something on the coast this summer, he and Meredith; they'd touched each other's wounds, cut away the bad, sewed up gaping holes inside themselves. They'd healed. That was a good thing.

"I know it's hard," Mary continued. "Believe me, Derek. Especially with you being out here," she added. "The girls, they worked long hours too when the kids were young, but I was there and their sisters were there. There was a certain amount of…," she paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. "Well, I could be there for them, and they helped each other a lot too. I think about you and Meredith out here all by yourselves, and I know you are doing better now, but—"

"We are doing better, Mom," he interrupted. "And I promise, we'll visit more. And we want you and the girls to visit more too. I can't believe it's been this long since you've seen Em."

"No, Derek." She patted his knee twice. "Well, of course I'd love to see the baby more," she amended herself. "Your sisters and I all would. But I just think about you and Meredith out here alone and I can't help you like I did for your sisters. And I know you have friends out here," she added quickly. "And Mark's out here, of course. But you know, he's not exactly the guy you're going to call to come babysit. You two do it all by yourselves."

"With varying levels of success," Derek shrugged.

"You do what you have to do, Derek," Mary said softly. "And I'm proud of you."

Derek didn't respond for a few moments. His mother had never been stingy with those words. He'd heard them when he graduated from kindergarten and when he'd graduated from medical school. He had heard them when he struck out in the bottom of the ninth inning to end his middle school's team's chances to go to the playoffs. Mark was mad, his coach was disappointed, but she was proud anyway. He had heard it the first time he was published and she'd called him after reading his article in the New England Journal of Medicine. She told him that she hadn't understood a word of it but she was proud anyway. He had heard it when he married Addison, and when he married Meredith. He'd never forget the way the words sounded when she hugged him and kissed him and nearly cried, holding a newborn Emily in her arms. But the words sounded a little different now, like she meant them more now than she ever had. Pride was a funny thing.

"Emily does this thing now," he finally said, nodding and breaking the silence. "We got her this doctor kit for her birthday. She might want to examine you when you get home. I think she's a little bored with just Meredith and me as patients."

"I think I can handle that," Mary replied, and the two of them went back to looking at the road ahead of them in silence.

"Mom?" Derek spoke up after a minute or two.

"What is it, Derek?"

"Meredith. She says," he hesitated briefly before continuing on. "She says she doesn't know. And she worries, about the not knowing." He sighed. "I don't know how to make her know."

Mary cocked her head slightly to the left and changed her position slightly, crossing her left leg over her right rather than her right over her left. "You can't make her know," she said after some thought.

"I have to," he responded almost immediately.

"Derek, listen to me—no, look at the road—you can't make her know that everything is going to be all right anymore than you can make yourself know," she said quietly. "You can't make anybody know something like that. Grief is a strange thing. It never really goes away," she continued with a vague sadness tinting her words. "But eventually you learn to live with it. It's the process of figuring out how you're going to live with it that is the really hard part."

"So what do I do?" he asked desperately.

"You're doing it already, Der," she assured him, her tone taking on a certain tenderness as she continued to speak. She reached over and squeezed his arm. "You and Meredith protected your family. You thought about your daughter first, and then you did what you had to do to keep her life about what she knows. Even if that meant staring your loss in the face and putting yourself outside of your comfort zone."

"We did that," he agreed softly.

"You did."

"She's still scared though," he countered.

Derek kept his eyes on the road, kept driving, as he heard her take a breath and begin to speak. "When Dad died," she said, "I had no idea how I was ever going to handle it. I was dealing with Kathleen's braces and Annie's dance costumes, and you remember Nancy at 12. Difficult doesn't begin to cover it," she chuckled. "I thought I had my hands full then, but then all of a sudden, I had you kids and the business to take care of by myself. And Dad was gone. And every time I thought about Dad being gone, it hurt so much that I felt like I couldn't breathe. I couldn't believe it."

"Yeah," Derek nodded.

"I didn't know how I was going to take care of you kids when I wasn't sure how to take care of myself."

"You never let on," he breathed, the admiration apparent in his speech's every inflection. He remembered the nights they spent together, all six of them, in the days and weeks immediately following his father's death, curled up in his parents' bed. He remembered his mother's first day at her new job as a secretary, the way she'd shuffled all five of them off to school that morning, came in at six that evening, and had dinner on the table by seven. He vaguely recalled his uncle buying out his father's share of the contracting business they owned together; the memories of his mother paying the bills at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning were much more easily conjured. He didn't remember much about the details of their lives; it was just his family's way during his adolescence and that was that. "I never knew you were scared."

"Did Emily know that you were scared?" Mary came right back.

"No, she didn't," he replied. "I hope that she didn't."

"You protect your children," she continued definitively. "I didn't want you to know I was scared either. You were scared enough. But I got a job, and Gram and Pop helped me with you and your sisters, and Uncle Alan bought the business. And eventually, we made a new normal," she sighed, like the strain of the loss and the magnitude of the accomplishment still staggered her when she thought about them. "Nobody can know that everything's going to be all right," she said. "Not even you, Derek. It's impossible. But you can have faith," she offered confidently. "You can believe that no matter what happens, you will be strong enough to survive it somehow. You can know that you love your daughter, and you'll do anything to keep her safe and happy. And you know Meredith, and Meredith knows you," she breathed empathetically. "Even if she thinks she doesn't, Meredith knows the important things already. You can't make her know that everything will be ok, but you don't have to. You just have to keep going, together, and then eventually you get there. One foot in front of the other, Derek."

She made it sound so simple. "Meredith loves Emily so much."

"Of course she does," Mary said tenderly.

"She'd do anything for her," he added.

"If you know what you love, the rest falls into place somehow," she said. "Somehow it's enough."

He sighed. "So, one foot in front of the other?"

"All you can do, Der."

He turned onto the lonely two-lane street that eventually turned into a gravel road that led to the house. They were almost home.

"You know," he said playfully, "I'm going to tell Nancy next time I talk to her that you said that difficult doesn't even begin to cover it with her."

"Nancy at age 12?" Mary laughed. "'Difficult' was a kind assessment."

"Her problem is that she pales in comparison to your favorite child," he teased. "Your only son, brain surgeon, all of that."

"You better watch that ego," she laughed. "Besides, don't be ridiculous. Maggie is my favorite."

"Oh, well, who's going to break the news to Kathleen?" Derek asked amusedly.

"I did before I left Fairfield," Mary replied seriously. "I hope you don't mind; I'll be living here with you and Meredith for several years."

He turned onto the gravel. The tires crunched as they made their way down the road and towards the house. This location had been very much about peace. Serenity. Solitude. All the things that someone trying to escape all things Manhattan might be in search of. At first it took some getting used to. Though the closest set of stores was five minutes away, it was still a drive. There were no neighbors, nobody's loud music or yappy dogs to deal with, but if he needed to borrow an egg, or check if it was just their cable that was out, or if it was everyone's, there was no one to call. Eventually, though, he grew to love it. The sprawling property encompassed a small lake and a patch of dense woods with a trail leading through them, connecting them to the clearing on one side where they built the house and the clearing on the other side that led to the lake, empty except for a small, marked dog grave.

The house was big but not too big, well-built and luxurious without being ostentatious. He hand-selected every detail, from the gray stone walls to the dark wood spokes that made up the porch's fence. He chose the color of the shutters—green—and the metal that made up the doorknob and knocker—brass—and the kind of flowers that were planted by the front steps—yellow tulips. Four bedrooms, two fireplaces, a large clawfoot tub in the master bathroom, a kitchen with counter space, and a deck off of the back door. Everything about this house was on purpose, even the location of the grassy clearing where he parked his car now.

"I'm glad you're here, Mom," he said, turning off the engine and sitting back in his seat for a minute, looking up at the house in front of him.

"I am too, Derek."

Twenty minutes after they arrived home, Derek and Mary sat at the kitchen island waiting for Meredith and Emily to get home. They didn't have much in the way of food for Derek to offer his mother, but Mary had said she was fine with just some water. Derek was done talking about himself and his marriage and his life for right now; there would be plenty of opportunities for Mary to ask him about those things later this weekend, and frankly, what little he had shared had exhausted him.

"So Jeremy is looking at Columbia," Mary said, sipping her water.

"Great school," Derek smiled, raising his glass. "He just better be prepared for those student loans."

"He's already told Kathleen it won't be a problem because he's planning to be rich."

"Oh, well then he's got it all figured out. Does he know what he wants to major in?"

Mary shook her head, but before she could elaborate further, they heard the front door open and Meredith speaking to Emily, bustling inside. She came into the kitchen balancing Emily on her right hip and holding two grocery bags in her left hand. Her green long-sleeved t-shirt rode up a little at the waist, where Emily's knees gripped her torso for stability, and her jeans hung low on her hips. Emily wrapped her arms around Meredith's neck and played absently with Meredith's ponytail.

"Hi," Meredith said, sounding a little flustered despite obviously knowing that Derek and Mary had beaten them home. She set the two bags down on the counter opposite Derek and Mary and then turned around.

"Hi, Meredith," Mary said, wrapping Meredith, and Emily by proxy, in a hug. When she stepped back, her expression softened and a smile spread across her face. "Hi, Emily."

Emily turned away and buried her face in Meredith's shoulder and Meredith jostled her a bit, trying to adjust her weight in her arms. Derek frowned. Emily wasn't usually shy, but it had arguably been a tumultuous 24 hours and maybe a little reservation was to be expected.

"Em, it's Nana," he urged. Emily turned her face back towards him and Mary, regarding her carefully, wrinkling her nose in an effort to reconcile a name she knew with a face she didn't. "Can you say hi to Nana? She came to see you for your birthday."

Emily shook her head, and turned back into Meredith's shoulder. Meredith smiled apologetically, but Mary nodded in reassurance.

"That's ok," she said. "We'll get to know each other again."

"I'll bring the rest of the bags in," he said, getting up from his place at the counter. Meredith slipped into his seat with Emily still in her arms, turning her to face forward while still keeping her in her lap.

The bags piled up on the kitchen floor as Derek continued to bring them inside. He paused for a moment, just to check on how the three of them were getting along. Everything seemed to be going well. Meredith and his mother were talking and Emily was slowly warming up. She already looked more interested in his mother than she did before. He went back outside to get the rest of the bags.

"I think that's everything," he called from the front door after he had carried in upwards of 20 bags, filled with everything they needed to restock their fridge.

"Did you get the two from the front seat?" Meredith asked.

"I did."

"Then that's it."

He came back to the kitchen, where he found his mother still seated at the counter and Emily sitting on the countertop. He stopped, touched Meredith's hip lightly with a few fingers and kissed the top of her head.

"Hey," he said. I love you. We're making it come true right now. You and me together. This is all part of it. One foot in front of the other.

She wrinkled her nose and smiled back. "Hey."

Meredith got up to help Derek tend to the groceries, and Emily reached forward and tugged on the sleeve of Mary's sweater. "Yes, Emily?" Mary said.

"You are my Nana?" she asked.

"I am," Mary smiled. "I'm your daddy's mommy."

"You came to see me cause of it's my birthday?"

"Yes, I did. I thought it would be fun to visit you since its so much fun to talk to you on the phone."

"Oh."

"I was thinking that we could play this weekend," Mary grinned, hinting to Emily. "Do you like to play?"

Emily nodded shyly. While Mary kept Emily busy, Meredith and Derek started to unpack the bags and put the groceries away. Meredith put three of the bags on the counter next to Emily.

"Em, can you help us unpack the food?" she asked.

Emily nodded and started pulling items out of the first bag while Mary continued to talk to her. As Emily unpacked each thing, Mary grouped them together on the counter, the frozen French fries with the bag of frozen mixed vegetables, the apples with the bananas. "What's your favorite thing to play?" she asked.

Emily looked up. "Hey, I have tea parties sometimes."

"You do?" Mary asked, astonished for her benefit.

"You can show Nana your special hat that you wear to tea parties, Em," Meredith interjected, taking the frozen items from Emily and putting them in the freezer.

"You have a special hat for tea parties?" Emily nodded. "That sounds perfect. Would you invite me the next time you have one?" Emily nodded again, pulling out a bag of chocolate chip cookies.

"Nana, these are the goodest cookies in the world," Emily announced, holding the bag up for Mary to see before she handed it to her to open. "I have one right now."

Mary looked back at Meredith. Meredith whipped her head around and looked at the bag in Mary's hand and Emily's hopeful face. "You can have one," she said. Mary quickly opened the bag for her and passed her a cookie.

"Daddy, look what I got," Emily said triumphantly. She pulled a thick envelope out of the bag, absolutely stuffed with pictures.

"That's great, Bean," Derek replied enthusiastically. "Why don't you show Nana the pictures of all the fun things you did this summer?"

Emily nodded, and thrust the envelope at Mary. "Look, Nana."

Mary opened the envelope, taking the stack of 4x6 prints in her hands while Derek helped Meredith finish putting everything away.

"This me at my ocean," Emily said, pointing to the first picture in the pile.

The date June 18 was stamped in the lower left corner. The picture showed a soaking wet Emily in her blue bathing suit, her back towards the camera. Locks of her curly hair were matted to her neck, water droplets cascading down her back, legs, and arms. She looked as if she was trying to catch the water in her hands, squatting down a little with both arms outstretched and dipped into the water, thrusting upward and sending sprays of ocean into the air as she waited for the next wave to rush in.

"Do you like to swim?" Mary asked.

"I am a good swimmer," she nodded seriously. "My Daddy swims too. And Mommy." She pointed again at the picture. "That's a wave and it comes in like _woosh_ and you have to jump. Can you jump?"

"I can, but you are probably better at it," Mary replied good-naturedly.

"I'm a good jumper," she agreed.

"Em, tell Nana how you jumped the waves," Derek said.

"I did it like this," she said, demonstrating by reenacting what she did with her hands, a grand sweeping movement that she performed with gusto from her place on the counter. "See?"

"That must have been so much fun!"

"Yes," Emily replied, pulling that picture off the top of the pile and trying to urge Mary on to the next one. There were a few more from the same day, similar shots of Emily in the ocean, splashing and laughing as she looked at the camera.

"What's this one?" Mary asked, getting to a picture from another day. Derek and Emily looked up at the camera on July sixth, hands and knees dirty with wet sand as they showed off their drippy sand castle for the photograph. Emily had wet sand coating her thighs and halfway up her arms as she held two handfuls of the stuff up for Meredith to take the picture. The castle boasted four sloppy towers, surrounding a fairly large, albeit shallow, hole.

"I builded a sandcastle."

"That looks like a great sandcastle," Mary praised. "How did you get to be such a good builder?"

"My Daddy showed me," Emily shrugged. "Nana, you have to dig."

"And, Bean, what do we have to do when the water comes in?" Derek said, the last of the groceries finally away, as he slipped into the empty chair next to his mother and Meredith took the one next to him.

"We dig really fast like this," Emily answered anxiously, demonstrating the frantic scurrying motion for Mary, "Cause the water knocks the castle down."

"Which sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad," Derek continued for his mother. "Depending on her mood. One day, it could be the coolest thing ever and the next, major meltdown if her castle got ruined," he laughed. "Right, Em?"

"If you work hard at something, you don't want to see it ruined, right?" Mary countered, understanding the logic of a three-year-old perfectly.

Emily nodded. "Cause I am a good builder."

Mary continued to scroll through the pictures in the stack, quickly viewing the other three from the day they built that sandcastle and stopping at a new picture that didn't look like it was taken at the beach at all. Meredith was but a blur in the background as Emily reached for the camera, shrieking in delight and flying high on a park swing. The background of the picture was dark—this was from one of the days during the dangerous rip tides in late July—but Emily's joy was apparent.

"Is this from a time you went to the park?"

"Yeah, I just swingin,'" Emily said, touching her image with the tip of her index finger. "I go so high."

"Did your toes touch the sky?"

"Yes," she said, the expression on her face bearing no resemblance to someone speaking with any hint of sarcasm or hyperbole. "One time, they did, Nana. I go so high."

"Is this the house?" Mary asked, flipping to the next picture. "It's adorable."

The shot showed the tiny house at sunset, taken coming back from a walk into town to get ice cream. Derek had taken it barely two weeks ago, when they began to realize that summer was almost over and they'd be returning home very soon. We don't even have a picture of the house, he'd said, and he'd shooed Meredith and Emily onto the front step, sticky dripping cups in hand. He stepped back and took out the camera, and he'd taken this one without zooming in to focus on Meredith and Emily at all. He'd gotten the whole house, preserving perfectly their personal oasis. He'd zoomed in afterward, gotten a closer picture of Meredith and Emily smiling, sitting on the step together—it was probably the next one in the pile—but he liked this one better. A hint of beach was visible to the side of the house, orange spilling out all around them. Meredith and Emily's expressions weren't clear, but he loved the way Meredith's head turned towards Emily so attentively as she situated her, waiting for Derek to take what she thought would be the real picture.

"It was perfect," he agreed with his mother. "We loved it."

"That's Mommy," Emily gasped happily, pointing to Meredith when Mary flipped to the next picture, which was exactly the one Derek expected.

"Mommy is the best, isn't she?" Derek said, grinning when he felt Meredith's hand on his thigh as she leaned in to get a better look at the photo.

"Nana, she my Mommy," Emily said, pointing at the real Meredith sitting diagonally from her as if she was trying to help Mary make the connection.

"She is, isn't she? You are a lucky girl, Miss Emily."

Mary went to the next picture and her breath caught in her throat. Derek's almost did the same. He hadn't seen this picture before.

"Daddy, that's you," Emily said pointedly.

"It is," he agreed.

The picture had a date from mid-July stamped in the corner, but Derek didn't remember seeing it before. Somehow it must have gotten lost in the shuffle of the dozens of pictures they'd stored on their camera over the past few months.

In this particular shot, he was asleep on chaise lounge on the back porch with an open book, _Guess How Much I Love You_ , fanned out on his chest. He had one hand resting on the spine of the book and the other curled around Emily, who was asleep next to him, fixed between the arm rest and his body, slumped almost on top of him. Gray light filtered into the shot and the muted colors of Emily and Derek's sweatpants and long-sleeved t-shirts did nothing to contribute to the brightness of the photo. His hand caught Emily under her ribs, drawing her towards him even in his sleep, while his head tilted forward until his chin nearly touched the top of her head. She sprawled one arm across his chest and her mouth hung open just slightly in unadulterated bliss.

Who is that I'm holding?" Derek asked quietly.

"Emily Grace Shepherd," Emily declared, patting her chest proudly. "Daddy, we sleepin.'"

"When did you take this?" he asked, turning to Meredith. You captured our daughter's innocence on film. If we ever forget, this will always be here to remind us. And maybe one day, when she's older, she will look at this and realize how much I adore her.

"That day you two got up early to go fishing, and then it rained so we had to come home. You fell asleep reading," she explained. "When you didn't come in after awhile, I went out to check on you and I couldn't resist."

"This is beautiful," Mary breathed. "Can I take this one?"

"Oh, there should be enough in there for you to take five of each home," Meredith assured her. "They're probably just collated. We got one each made for you and Derek's sisters."

"Thank you, Meredith," Mary murmured appreciatively.

Emily looked around, scanning the expressions of her parents and grandmother. She decided that she'd had enough with pictures, and tugged on Mary's sleeve. "Hey, I am a doctor," she announced.

"You are?" Mary asked, humoring her with an appropriate level of astonishment and praise. "Like Mommy and Daddy?"

Emily nodded quickly. "Nana, your heart goes _boom boom boom_. I can hear it."

"Can you give me a check-up, Dr. Shepherd?" Mary asked.

"Why don't you take Nana up to your office?" Derek suggested. He helped Emily scoot off the countertop down to the floor. Emily reached up, extending her hand towards Mary for her to follow where she led. She didn't wait for Mary to take her hand, and instead, dashed forward alone, towards the stairs that led to her bedroom.

"Mom?" Derek called as the two of them headed upstairs, "Just watch your eyes. She can get kind of close."

Mary laughed heartily and opened her mouth to say something but before she could get the words out, Emily called for her from the other room. "Nana!"

"I'm coming, sweetie!" Mary replied. "We'll be back," she said, and disappeared to go with Emily.

Derek settled into his chair, flipping through the remaining pictures slowly so Meredith could see as well. They sat in relative silence for a few minutes, smiling at most of the pictures, laughing outright at others, pulling favorites out of the pile for Meredith's locker and Derek's office.

"You ok being back?" he asked suddenly.

"Yeah," she breathed out after a second's hesitation. "It's weird. It feels like we've been gone forever and also kind of like we never left."

"No forgetting how to get to the grocery store or any of that?" he teased.

"If I can't remember how to get to the grocery store, I certainly shouldn't be cutting someone open on Tuesday," she shot back. "Fortunately, my memory seems to be razor sharp."

"Emily seems much better," he observed, putting the stack of pictures to rest on the counter.

"Yeah. She is," Meredith assured him. "She really freaked out last night."

"She did."

"But she seems to know everything now," she continued. "I don't think she forgot."

"No, I think it was just because it was dark and she was tired."

"I hope so." Meredith rested her elbow on the counter, propping her head up in her opened palm. Her hand found Derek's thigh again and she squeezed at his quads muscles. "She'll be ok to be away from us on Tuesday, right? I mean, she's been away from us before. And she loves Brenda. Brenda is great. I love Brenda. But do you think the separation will be ok? She's been with us every hour of every day for the past three months, and then to go back to the ten, twelve hour separations all in one day? It's got to be a lot on a three-year-old."

Doubt. There it was again. He tried to remind himself of the solution he had reconciled himself to earlier that morning-he could not make her know. But he didn't have to. Meredith knows already. Meredith knows the important things. One foot in front of the other. Go to work on Tuesday and deal with Tuesday's problems on Tuesday.

"We'll be right there in the hospital if she needs us," he said softly, reaching forward and touching her face, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "But Emily will be fine. She'll probably be excited to see all of her friends again."

"Yeah," Meredith agreed. "That will be good for her."

They fell quiet again. Derek shuffled the stack of photos in his hands, putting Meredith's selections—he and Emily napping together and a shot of Emily lying belly down in very shallow surf with her ankles crossed behind her, looking up at the camera with a big smile on her face—aside for her. He took two for himself as well—Meredith and Emily on the front step as fading sunlight poured in around them until their frames looked almost black in the picture, and Emily standing on the jetty early one morning with her windbreaker zipped up to the chin and the hood up, smiling so wide that her eyes were closed.

Sunlight poured into the kitchen. He could hear Mary and Emily laughing upstairs. He cocked his head ever so slightly to the right as he regarded Meredith. She smiled, and he nodded just barely. Maybe the problem, he thought, was her definition of knowing. He had to admit, he didn't _know_ know either. But he trusted, and the way Meredith was looking at him now, she trusted too. And that was good enough for him.

"So, do you think your mom would be up to watch Emily tomorrow night?" she asked.

"What exactly did you have in mind, Dr. Grey?"

"Dinner. A movie. Maybe not so much," she smirked suggestively. "We've had a three-year-old with us every hour of every day for the past three months, Derek."

"I think my mother could handle that."

They heard a shriek and delighted laughter coming from Emily, followed by the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor. If Derek had to guess, he'd say that Emily had recruited his mother as a guest at one of her tea parties, and asked for her help in setting up the appropriate furniture and supplies. If Emily had remembered where the pink Easter bonnet was, Derek would bet anything that his mother was wearing it right now as she became the latest student in Emily's finishing school.

"It's ok, us being home," Meredith said, glancing in the direction of the stairs and laughing a little.

"Yeah," Derek agreed. "Yeah, it is."


	14. I think I got it right this time

_Yeah, after all the crazy days,  
_ _I made it through  
I can't picture myself with no one but you  
And I think I got it right this time_

* * *

Meredith let Derek choose the place for their date. So far, he had done exactly what she'd expected him to do. He told her to wear something nice and he took her to dinner. Derek thought himself the traditional kind of romantic—he could dress debonair when he wanted, he could buy flowers, he could sweep her off her feet. But as far as grand gestures went, he wasn't and had never been a man right out of a romantic comedy. All of the things he'd ever done that brought her right to her knees had happened off the cuff—words, not gestures, unplanned and tumbling out of his mouth one after the other, bubbling up and out from a very full heart.

_I've been in love with you for…ever._

_I want to die when I'm 110 years old, in your arms._

_Marry me._

He told her once that he wished he had done something more elaborate in proposing to her, something more dramatic than waking up in her arms in an on-call room bunk bed and simply asking. But the fact was that he never seemed like he planned much.

This, though—when, following a dinner at Seattle's best steakhouse, he turned their car down a quiet street and headed towards the water—it looked like he had thought about this for awhile. Recognition flickered across her face, and she offered a small, sated smile.

_I know this place where there's an amazing view of the sunrise over the ferryboats._

He remembered.

The dock had already been abandoned for the day, some ferryboats lined up at the harbor, waiting to be used again for the next day's morning commute. It wasn't raining now and she didn't expect to stay until sunrise. The night cast a shadow over the dingy dock, and trash overflowed out of a nearby can, but she looked around at a scene that wasn't particularly beautiful, or romantic, and took it in.

"Wine?" Derek asked, reaching to the backseat for a bottle of red and two glasses.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned her body towards him. Looking him up and down with a smirk on her face, she took the glass he offered her.

"I know it's not right out of the bottle, but I figured that, hey, we're evolving. We've come this far. We can drink out of glasses."

"Out of everywhere in Seattle, this is where you wanted to go on our date?" she asked, and took a sip.

"This is the only place I wanted to go on our date," he said with so much certainty that she had to wonder how long he had been thinking about this, hoping for this moment. "I figured I should feed you first," he grinned. "But this is the only place I wanted to go."

"You realize that we'll be playing catch up at work for weeks," she said seriously.

"Yes."

"And we have a kid who needs a lot of attention and can take or leave sleeping in her own bed," she continued.

"Yes," he replied again. "Meredith, what's wrong?"

"I'm just saying that it might be awhile before we get out again."

"You don't like it," he sighed.

"No," she interjected quickly, enthusiastically. "I love it. I love that you brought me here. I just thought you might have wanted something more."

"Meredith, there isn't anything more," he smiled and touched her hand. "This was the beginning."

"The details of the beginning after my fourth shot of tequila are a little fuzzy to me," she said.

She remembered him approaching her in the bar, all of the initial conversation and the blur of laughter and alcohol and raw sexual tension. She remembered pulling him into her house, his lips on her neck and then her chest, and she remembered somehow winding up naked on her living room floor. Later, after they started having sex in her bed, and after they had realized there was more to this than just sex, they established that she hadn't forgotten his name, but had simply never asked for it. And they tried to piece together that first night.

"I mostly remember the morning after," she grinned.

"No, the real beginning," he tried to clarify.

"This was the real beginning for you?"

"It was."

She smiled. If this was the real beginning for him, it meant that it was an empty bottle of red wine and the rain beating down on the windshield. It meant falling asleep in the backseat of Derek's car, slumped nearly on top of him, and him waking her up the next morning lest she forget the sunrise she promised.

"The sunrise the next morning," she murmured after a moment or two.

"What about it?" he asked.

Hungover on red wine, in the clothes she wore the night before, wondering how she was going to explain to Izzie and George where she had been all night. Wrapped in Derek's arms with a crick in her neck, watching orange streak the sky—and thinking that this could be the real thing.

_You're falling for him._

"The sunrise. That was the real beginning for me."

He smiled, and his gaze softened. She loved him from that moment in the backseat of his car, and despite everything they had put each other through over the years, that one fundamental had never changed. It was the one thing that she could say 'always' to. Even when they hurt each other. Even when she couldn't say the actual words right to him. Even when she didn't feel adored in the way she did in this moment, her hand clasped firmly in his. It was always an always.

"Richard called and asked if I could come in a little early tomorrow," Derek said after awhile. "He has a patient with a vestibular schwannoma and with the location of the tumor, they're concerned about possible hearing loss if they don't operate quickly. The patient plays tenor sax, so he wanted the best doctor he could find."

"And you're the best?" she asked sarcastically.

"Oh, yes," he smirked, before turning serious again. "Will you be ok getting Emily ready and out the door by yourself?"

"Yeah," she replied. "We'll be ok."

She glanced at the clock. After a whirlwind weekend of getting themselves ready for their lives again, Mary had ushered them out. Mary promised that Emily would be fine, and Derek told her to put on something gorgeous, and they went out. One last moment away from reality before the new real beginning.

"What time is your mother's flight?" she asked.

"She's catching the midnight redeye," Derek sighed, looking at the clock himself, "So she wanted to leave for the airport at 10."

"Ok."

"I'm sorry we can't stay until sunrise this time," he murmured.

She looked him, locking his eyes with hers. "This is still good," she sighed blissfully.

She set her wine aside and hoisted herself up, climbing gingerly over the console separating them and straddling his lap. She kissed him once, then twice, longer the second time. She took the lead this time, trailing her fingertips up and down his chest, and kissing the sensitive spot by his ear, then the spot under his jaw. Her hands traveled down his body when he reciprocated, kissing her back with such intensity, and moaning into her mouth as her hands dipped lower and he grew hard under her.

His hands came up, over her ribs, under her breasts, and then across her nipples. She sucked in a breath, and smiled, making quick work of the buttons on his shirt. "I love you."

"Enough to still risk a public indecency citation?" he asked playfully.

"Shut up," she moaned, her head dipping back when his lips found the sensitive skin between her breasts and his hand reached behind her to start to unzip her dress.

"I'm just saying," he said between staccato nipping and kissing, undoing her bra clasp, "It wasn't an issue back then. I mean," he sucked in a breath, "We could just go home."

"Not a chance," she countered, gasping as his hands left her breasts, trailing down and under her dress. It had been too long; it was an empty threat, and he knew it just as much as she did. "I'm ready, Derek."

The next morning, Derek tiptoed quietly out and off to work, just a few hours after he had dropped his mother off at the airport. Before she left, Mary had pulled Meredith into a hug, held her close for a moment, and asked her to call if she needed anything. Meredith nodded and promised that they would see everyone at Christmas.

That morning, Meredith bustled around the house getting herself and Emily ready for the day, slipping easily back into the routine of rushing. What had been light drizzling when she first woke up had turned into a downpour as she drove to work, Emily singing quietly to herself in the backseat.

When they got there, Meredith opened her door and promptly stepped into a puddle barely an inch or two deep but still enough to soak her shoe through to the sock. She grumbled, and slung her bag over her shoulder, then went to the backseat to get Emily.

"We are here, Mommy!" Emily exclaimed, and let her juice cup loll to the side and settle in her car seat with her while Meredith unbuckled her. Emily climbed out and, standing in the doorway of the car, allowed Meredith to pull her sweatshirt hood up over her hair. Emily reached for Meredith's hand and smiled. "I can jump."

Meredith laughed and looked down at the puddles. "I don't think so, Em." She took Emily into her arms, balancing her bag on her left arm and Emily in her right. "Here, take your juice," she said, handing Emily the cup from her car seat. "Come on, I'll carry you."

"I can walk myself," Emily said indignantly, squinting as she looked up at the rain and stretched her hands out.

"No, I don't want you to get all wet," Meredith answered. She shut the car door and walked briskly towards the lobby, ducking her head down like it would actually help to block out the rain. "Are you excited to see Miss Brenda today? And all your friends?" Meredith asked, pausing briefly to thank the nurse just a few feet in front of her who stopped to hold the door for her. "I bet Ashley will be happy to see you."

"Ashwee is my friend," Emily said while Meredith lowered her down, letting her walk for herself now that they were inside.

"What button do we push? Where does Mommy go?" Meredith asked when the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside along with two other people. A brief phone call from Derek and a page from the nurses' station about an hour before let her know that she had paperwork waiting for her at the nurses' station to sign before getting to anything else.

"Four," Emily announced.

"That's right, good job!" Meredith praised, pressing the button before Emily could get to it and press them all.

"Where's Daddy?" Emily asked.

"Daddy is already here because he had some things to do early in the morning," Meredith replied, "But he's going to pick you up today."

"When it's time to eat dinner?"

"Yep, that's when we come get you."

The elevator doors opened at three, and then again at four, and Meredith and Emily stepped off, walking down the hall hand in hand and towards the nurse's station.

"Dr. Grey, welcome back. Hi, Emily," Tyler smiled from behind the desk, standing up and peeking over so he could see the child. "HR sent some papers down for you to sign," he said, handing Meredith a clipboard and a pen. "They just basically says that you'll be reinstated to the staff today following a leave of absence, you have surgical privileges again, that kind of thing. Some have to go down to payroll too. The chief has already signed them."

"Oh, ok," Meredith said. She dropped her bag to the floor picked Emily up. Taking the clipboard from him, she set Emily down briefly on the counter. She kept one hand on Emily's stomach, holding her steady, while she flipped quickly through the papers.

"Mommy, how come it's rainin' outside?" Emily asked, looking behind her at the large windowpane with rivulets of rain streaming down it.

"Because we live in Seattle, Em," Meredith replied, barely looking up as her eyes scanned the page in front of her. "It rains here a lot."

"Why?" she pressed on, pulling her hood off her head.

"Because we live near a lot of water."

"Rain is the same as water?" she continued curiously.

"Yes, it's water that falls down from the sky," Meredith answered, pointing towards the window and pausing for a moment to watch the droplets stream down. "We need it for all the grass and flowers."

"They drink water too?"

"Yes, everyone needs water."

"Oh," Emily sighed. "Mommy? Remember when I goed in the ocean and I swimmed?"

"Yes, Emily," she said, her fingers glossing lightly, briefly, over Emily's midsection while she signed the first paper.

"That water is not good for me to drink though," Emily continued seriously.

"You're right," Meredith agreed. She looked over at Emily, who had taken to staring at her while she filled everything out. "It has salt in it."

"Why?"

"Because that's how oceans are," she replied simply. "Their water has salt in it, and salt just makes you thirstier and thirstier." She initialed the second and third paper and signed at the bottom where she was instructed to do so. "These all go down to HR?" she asked Tyler, motioning to the clipboard.

"Oh, I can send them for you," he said hastily, taking the paperwork back from her and stowing it on the desk before he rushed off to tend to a page.

Meredith picked up her bag and slung it back over her shoulder. Just as she was about to help Emily down, she heard a familiar voice call her name from a few paces down the hall.

She whipped her head around and saw Cristina walking briskly toward her. Her curly black hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and her white jacket, with 'Chief Resident' newly embroidered under her name, covered pristine light blue scrubs.

"Cwistina!" Emily squealed delightedly.

"Hey," Meredith smiled, Cristina standing in front of her. She was one of the good things about being back, if not the best thing. When Cristina had stopped by the house briefly on Saturday afternoon—though, being on call, she was called away early—they'd easily slipped in to old conversation. Cristina told her about the about the hospital, and about the heart transplant she had assisted on the day before. Meredith nodded enthusiastically, and asked about this year's interns, though she wouldn't be taking any of her own this year.

"Welcome back."

"It's good to be back," Meredith sighed. Damp shoe aside, the fact that she hadn't actually practiced medicine yet aside, confidence coursed through her like she could take on the world if she wanted to—like she'd faced the worst and come back from it and now anything was possible. She could take a new real beginning if she wanted.

"Cwistina, I had summer at the beach," Emily announced happily, still seated on the counter.

Of all the people Cristina Yang intimidated on a daily basis, Emily was never one of them. If anything, it was the opposite. Emily saw how much Meredith loved Cristina, and actually found her to be quite funny in all her seriousness and dry humor. Cristina wasn't affectionate the way Izzie was; she was simply clueless as to how to behave around a child. Emily, from the very beginning, entirely disregarded Cristina's wariness, and treated her with the same affection she did anyone else. Cristina was her mother's friend, so why shouldn't she be her friend as well?

"I heard about that," Cristina replied. "Your mom said you had fun."

Meredith smiled. Cristina had never been a kid person. She could relate to them on a doctor-patient level, but the smaller they were, the less she knew what to do with them. Meredith had seen her difficulty in relating to the parents of patients even more, but hadn't experienced much of it herself once she had had Emily. Cristina had been the fourth to hold Emily after she was born, after she and Derek did of course, and after Izzie. She told Meredith when Emily was a few months old that if she had to go and have a kid, Emily was a pretty good one.

"I swimmed," Emily nodded. "But now I back at the hosital."

"Yes, you are," Cristina agreed. "Your mom is probably excited, huh?"

"She is," Meredith replied. "I just had to fill out these forms and then I'm going to take her up to daycare, and then I'm back. Oh, _crap_ ," she muttered, rifling quickly through her bag. "I had a check for daycare for this month. It must still be in the car. Can you watch her for a second while I run down to the parking lot and get it?"

"Oh, uh," Cristina looked around, hesitant at the idea of being left alone with Emily. "Can't you just pay them later today?"

"I could but I'd rather just pay them now and get it done," Meredith sighed. "Cristina, I'll be back up here in five minutes, it'll be fine," she promised. "Come on, it's raining and I don't want her to get wet. Em, stay with Cristina, ok?"

"Meredith," Cristina started, before Meredith interrupted the protest that was about to spill out of her mouth.

"Do you have a patient you need to see?"

"No, but," Cristina interjected.

"Five minutes," Meredith promised. "Please, Cristina?"

"Hey, I got one of those," Emily cut in, tugging on the sleeve of Cristina's lab coat and pointing to the stethoscope around her neck.

Cristina turned towards Emily and Meredith smiled, darting toward the elevator while she had an out.

A few minutes later, Meredith had returned to the fourth floor nurses' station with the check in her hand. Cristina stood in front of Emily, who was still seated on the counter. Emily had the ear buds of Cristina's stethoscope firmly in her ears and she pressed the chestpieceagainst her own heart, staring at her body and knitting her brow in concentration.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"If she's going to hear anything, she needs a real stethoscope," Cristina replied seriously.

"Not for two hundred dollars she doesn't."

Emily removed the ear buds from her ears and set the stethoscope down in her lap. "Mommy, my heart is loud."

"Yeah? Is it like what Daddy told you it would sound like?"

"Uh huh," Emily nodded, "Boom boom boom."

"Daddy is so smart, isn't he?" Meredith teased.

Cristina scoffed. "Oh, give me a break," she said, "I know you're back and everything's all smiley and happy now but—"

"Ok," Meredith smiled brightly, cutting her off. "Em, give Cristina back her stethoscope."

"I need it," Emily frowned, tracing around the circular chestpiece with one finger.

"You have one at home," Meredith reminded her. "Come on, let's go see Miss Brenda."

"Meredith!" Izzie called cheerfully, once from just own the hall and then again when she was next to her.

"Hey, Iz." Meredith returned her smile.

"I saw Derek earlier and he said you would be in around eight and here you are," Izzie beamed. "I'm glad you're back."

"Thanks, Iz."

"Hi, Emily," Izzie exclaimed, bubbly as she swept Emily into her arms for a hug. "I'm glad you're back too." Emily wrapped her legs around Izzie's waist, Izzie supporting her with both hands on her back as she held her face to face. "Oh, you look so much older!"

"That's cause I three years old now," Emily said matter-of-factly, holding up three fingers.

"Oh, that must be why!" Izzie replied incredulously. "You look very grown-up." She reached for the stethoscope in Emily's hands, resting in the space between them. "What's this? Are you working with us today?"

"Cristina let her borrow it momentarily," Meredith supplied.

"She's showing an interest, Meredith," Cristina countered somewhat defensively.

Meredith turned to Emily. "Tell Cristina that you're very curious and you show an interest in everything."

"I am curious," Emily repeated, looking behind her to Cristina and finally passing the stethoscope back to its owner.

"When are you going to come to my house, buddy?" Izzie asked as she shifted Emily to her right hip and tapped her on the nose.

"I not know," Emily shrugged.

"We'll have to talk to your mommy about it."

"Mommy?" Emily asked hopefully, deferring back to Meredith.

"Maybe one day this week," Meredith offered noncommittally.

Before Meredith could take Emily back from Izzie so she could finally drop her off upstairs and try to get back into the swing of being a surgical resident, Dr. Bailey rushed down the hall, towards the nurses' station. She reached for the phone, about to page someone, but stopped when she saw Meredith.

"Grey," she said pointedly, hanging up the phone and heading right to her. "I need a neuro consult on a four-month-old down in the clinic presenting with severe arm weakness."

"Oh," Meredith replied a bit hesitantly. Oh. I actually have a case. I have a patient to see. "Ok. I'll be right down."

"I'm headed down to the pit but, Grey?" Bailey paused for a moment before she breezed by them, "Welcome back. You too, Miss Emily."

"Thanks, Dr. Bailey," Meredith replied. "Ok, I better go do that consult. Izzie, can I have my kid back?"

Izzie gently eased Emily down to the floor, and Meredith reached for Emily's hand.

"Mer, I was thinking we could all have lunch later?" Izzie offered, motioning to the three of them. "Alex, George, and Lexie too. Just as like a welcome home thing?"

"One o'clock?"

Izzie smiled brightly. "I'll let them know."

"Em, are you ready to see Miss Brenda now?" Meredith asked, with Emily's hand firmly clasped in hers, as she started towards the elevator.

Cristina followed, pulling Meredith aside, sarcasm flavoring every word she spoke. "She's been planning some kind of excursion with your kid for like a week now," she said. "She probably wouldn't mind if Em moved in."

"I thought she'd be concentrating on the wedding," Meredith said with some surprise as she pushed the elevator button again.

"You have no idea," Cristina muttered sarcastically. "That's another beast entirely. I'm glad you're back."

"Me too."

Cristina's pager beeped loudly as the elevator lights blinked, indicating that it was descending from the fifth floor to the fourth. Cristina groaned as she looked at the screen of her pager. "That's the pit," she grumbled before entreating Meredith. "Hope that this is actually a case for me rather than me having to go save some intern from killing someone again. I'll introduce you to the new group later."

"Here's to hoping," Meredith grinned as Cristina pressed the down button to wait for the second elevator while the first opened and Meredith and Emily stepped inside.

The daycare on the fifth floor opened several years before, though Meredith had never taken much notice of it until she had to. She loved Brenda though, and if she had to leave Emily with anyone, she'd want it to be her. The center had been converted from four gutted patient rooms, marked by a sign next to the only door that remained and decorated with paper cut-outs of summer suns and sailboats taped to the door.

Meredith pushed open the door and turned immediately to the high counter and desk to her left. The daycare had about two dozen regular attendees, all of whom were the children of doctors, nurses, or other hospital employees. Most of the other children, ranging in ages from infancy to four years old, had already been dropped off for the day to be tended to by Brenda and five other early childhood educators or child life specialists.

"Emily!" Brenda cried, springing up from behind the desk when she saw Meredith. She came out from behind the desk and squatted down to Emily's level. "Hi, sweetie! We missed you!"

"We missed you too," Meredith replied in tune. "Right, Em?"

"Miss Brenda, I was at the beach," Emily said excitedly.

"That's what your mom and dad said," Brenda replied. "Did you have fun?"

Emily nodded.

"That's great! But we're happy to have you back here with us. Your friends have been excited to see you!"

"Emily!" another woman, Jackie, who was in charge of the two- and three-year-olds, came in from one of the other rooms. "Hi, cutie! Ashley and Tessa are here already; wanna come play?" she asked, extending her hand.

"Are you ok?" Meredith asked, joining Brenda in kneeling down to meet Emily's eyes. Emily nodded, a little hesitant but not afraid. "Ok, Em," she said, cupping the back of Emily's head with her palm and pressing her lips to Emily's forehead. "I'll see you when it's time for dinner."

"Ok, Mommy," Emily replied, taking Jackie's hand and disappearing with a wave into the other room.

"How was your trip, Dr. Grey?" Brenda asked as they both stood up.

"It was really nice. A little hectic getting back," she laughed a little, shaking her head, "But it's good to be here. I have your check for the month, and her stuff here," she added, rummaging through her bag.

"Ok, great," Brenda replied, returning to the desk to take care of the business side of things. She didn't sit down, but merely leaned over her chair and entered some information in to her computer while she was still standing, and looked up. "So how is Emily? Has anything changed since we last had her here?"

Meredith cocked her head to the side and thought for a second. "She still needs her nap in the afternoon, but if she doesn't sleep as long, don't worry," she said. "Lately, she's only been napping for about an hour and a half. Oh," she said with a flourish, "She might give you a hard time about doing everything herself. Just, you know, she might freak out if you put the straw in her juice box for her or something. She's going through this independent thing," Meredith smiled, cautioning, "So if she cries about it, don't think that it's you."

"Noted," Brenda grinned. "We're glad to have her back. We did miss her while she was gone."

"She's excited to be back too."

"Is there anything else you need?" Brenda asked.

"No, just," Meredith paused for a moment and looked to the door Emily had disappeared into a few minutes before. "Page me if there's anything. I've been concerned about going from having her with us every minute of the day to being separated again. I wasn't sure how she would handle it. I mean, she seems fine," she sighed, taking a breath before she continued. "Derek said she would be, his mother said the same thing, and she looks fine. Can you just page me if she's not?"

"Of course, Dr. Grey," Brenda replied comfortingly.

It took her no time at all to go to the residents' lounge and change into scrubs, and when she draped her stethoscope around her neck and got on the elevator to go down to the clinic, for a moment she forgot that she had ever been away.

Once in the clinic, she asked where the neuro consult was needed and scanned quickly through the patient's chart as she walked down to his curtained-off area.

"Good morning, Mrs. Hoffman?" Meredith said softly, peering around the curtain before stepping into the enclosed area. She shook hands with a petite woman about her age, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt with her blonde hair pulled loosely back and off her face. She sat on the bed with her son in her arms. "I'm Dr. Grey, I'm a neurosurgeon."

"Surgeon?" the woman asked worriedly.

"Just a precaution," Meredith assured her quickly. "Dr. Bailey asked me to come in and talk to you about the weakness your son's experiencing in his arm."

Meredith smiled, taking a look at the baby who sat comfortably in his mother's arms, holding a toy in his right hand. The child was chubby, with stubby arms and legs and a round belly. His wispy blonde hair was combed over to the side, and he looked up at Meredith with big brown eyes and an open mouth with a little drool dripping down.

"He's trying to push himself up," Mrs. Hoffman began, "He tries to hold himself up, but it seems like his arms just give out and he falls. When he falls, he cries, and…" she trailed off. "I was worried so I brought him in."

"You did the right thing," Meredith smiled comfortingly. "Mrs. Hoffman, has Brennan had any health problems we should know about?"

"He had a heart murmur when he was born," she said carefully, "But the doctors said it was benign, and at his last checkup, it had completely disappeared."

Meredith took her stethoscope and pressed it against the baby's chest and then his back, listening intently. The murmur had in fact cleared up.

"Your pediatrician was right; the murmur is gone. Which is a good thing," she assured her. "Is there anything else? Any trauma? An accident?"

"No, nothing."

"What about his delivery?"

"Brennan was a big baby," Mrs. Hoffman laughed a little. "Nine pounds, eight ounces."

"Wow," Meredith replied, wincing a little. "And is he your first?"

Mrs. Hoffman nodded. "Five days late. His shoulder got stuck, but I mean," she breathed anxiously, trying to downplay what had probably been one of the scariest moments of her life. "They got him out really quickly, and they said there was no oxygen deprivation or anything. He hasn't shown any signs of brain damage."

"Ok," Meredith said, taking down some notes on his chart. "I'm going to do a basic neurological check, just to see if there is any apparent damage that I can tell from that, and then we'll go from there."

Mrs. Hoffman nodded and helped Meredith lay the boy down on the bed. He whimpered at the disturbance, and looked up and almost behind him while his mother held him steady.

"Hey, buddy," Meredith said soothingly. "I'm just going to check you out, ok? Mrs. Hoffman, first I'm going to see how Brennan responds to stimuli."

She nodded again and watched while Meredith rolled a pinwheel up his left foot and then his right, making some notes on his chart and noting that he had sensation in his lower extremities. When she did it to his arms however, only the right seemed to respond. When she rolled the pinwheel over his left arm, he laid there, whimpering and looking up at his mother, but seemingly unresponsive to the sensation at all.

She marked everything down on his chart and smiled reassuringly at Mrs. Hoffman before she proceeded. "You're a good boy, Brennan. You're doing so well," she murmured, gathering his arms in both hands and pressing them to his chest, bent at the elbow. She held them there briefly, but frowned when she let them go and only the right arm bent again and drew up to his chest on its own. She frowned at the left arm, which hung limply at his side. She repeated the same motions, and Brennan's arms reacted exactly the same way. "Have you noticed limpness in his left arm before?" Meredith asked.

Mrs. Hoffman nodded as her eyes filled with tears. "They told me it would go away but it just didn't seem right to just keep waiting for it to get better."

"You did the right thing by bringing him in, Mrs. Hoffman," Meredith said quietly. "We're going to figure out what's wrong."

She took his left arm in her hands and tried to rotate his wrist. It moved with good range of motion, but when she tried to repeat the maneuver with his elbow and shoulder, she was met with much more resistance. His elbow flexed but only with difficulty, and his shoulder fell limp in her hands, stiff when she tried to rotate it.

Brennan cried indignantly at the disturbance, rolling his head to the side with fat tears rolling down his face. "It's ok," Meredith soothed. "We're almost done."

"It's ok, Brenny," Mrs. Hoffman whispered, leaning down to him, keeping one hand on his stomach but pressing the other against his cheek. She kissed the crown of his head and murmured over and over, "It's ok."

Meredith straightened up, and nodded comfortingly at the woman seated across from her on the bed. Mrs. Hoffman scooped the baby up into her arms, kissed him and held him close. She fumbled through the bag she brought with her and offered him his pacifier. After a moment of maneuvering, he took it and sucked greedily.

"Mrs. Hoffman," Meredith began gently, "I'd like to get an x-ray and run a few other tests just to get a better idea of what's going on internally. Brennan is exhibiting some signs of nerve damage in his left arm. It is possible it could be a complication from his delivery."

"Why didn't they tell me this could keep going on?" Mrs. Hoffman demanded.

"Most injuries of this kind resolve themselves on their own," Meredith said. "My best guess is that the doctors were most immediately concerned with the heart murmur, but now that this is affecting his mobility and its not getting better, it is a cause for concern."

"Is he going to be ok?" she asked tearfully.

"We're going to get you some answers," Meredith promised.

Upstairs, a few hours later, Meredith leaned against the nurses' station, reading through the results of the tests she had ordered on Brennan Hoffman earlier that day. His EMG and NCS tests were problematic at face value, and the results difficult to obtain when the patient was a terrified four-month-old who squirmed and cried for his mother. Mrs. Hoffman sat with him the entire time, and Meredith knew from the extent of the nerve damage that the prick of the needle itself hadn't hurt him, but in such a stressful environment, surrounded by medical equipment, Brennan cried and cried. Mrs. Hoffman had been distraught, tearful herself, bent down with both hands on the baby and her lips pressed to the crown of his head. She offered him his pacifier and he alternated between taking it and spitting it out to cry.

The x-ray was more successful. Meredith gave Brennan a mild sedative and offered Mrs. Hoffman a few words of reassurance before walking her out to the waiting room herself. She promised that they were almost finished, but now, reading the full report of his EMG results, and holding his x-rays up to the light, she frowned at the extent of the damage. She sighed, marked the information down on his chart, and passed the paperwork and films back to the nurse to file away. Before she could turn to the waiting room, Derek came up behind her, ran the fingertips of his left hand lightly across her hip and spoke low, with warm breath on her neck and the words rushing by her ear.

"Dr. Grey," he said. "Welcome back."

"Welcome back, Dr. Shepherd," she replied, turning around to face him. "How did your vestibular schwannoma case go?"

"We got everything and the patient still has his hearing," he nodded proudly. "How is your day going?"

"Actually, I need a consult," she sighed. "I have a baby down in the clinic with a severe brachial plexus injury. He's going to need surgery, and I figured since you've done the procedure before-"

"Yeah, of course," Derek responded immediately. He tilted his head just slightly to the right, looked at her with concern in his eyes. "How old is the baby?"

"Four months," Meredith breathed. "Shoulder dystocia during delivery and now he's trying to push himself up but he can't."

"They didn't test for a brachial plexus injury at birth?" he frowned.

"They did but he also had what turned out to be a benign heart murmur," Meredith began. "They were probably more concerned with that at first and thought this would resolve on its own. I was just about to go tell his mother and then I wanted to call his pediatrician."

"Ok," Derek nodded, "And he's in the clinic?"

"Yes."

"Let me just check on this patient," he said, holding up the chart he held in his right hand. "I'll be down in a few minutes."

"Ok, I'm going to go tell his mother," Meredith sighed. Before she could turn back towards the elevators, Derek stopped her once more.

"Meredith?" he asked, "How was Emily this morning?"

"Good," Meredith smiled, nodding confidently. "Happy to see everybody. Although," she laughed, "She might be requiring more professional medical equipment than the things she has."

"Why is that?" Derek asked, delighted amusement lacing every inflection.

"Cristina let her use her stethoscope to listen to her own heart this morning," Meredith supplied. "She was very impressed with herself."

"Yeah, well she's very impressive," he countered, drawing her in a little closer for a moment. "How are you?"

Meredith sighed. Our daughter is healthy. She's upstairs playing right now. And you're here. And you will be here, all the time, saying things.

"I'm good too."

Back in the clinic, Meredith slipped quietly into the sectioned off area where Mrs. Hoffman and Brennan had returned to following the x-ray. The baby slept peacefully in her arms, curled up and molded to her with his hand on her chest. Mrs. Hoffman smoothed the baby's hair back, slowly and over and over again when he stirred and almost woke, and then returned her hand, palm outstretched, to rest on his chest.

"He's missing his nap," Mrs. Hoffman said quietly, taking her eyes off Brennan to look up expectantly at Meredith. "We're making do."

"Mrs. Hoffman," Meredith said softly, "Brennan's tests and x-rays were indicative of a brachial plexus injury, which is a birth injury that can happen with a shoulder dystocia. There can be nerve damage when the doctor tugs on the baby's head and neck to try to get him out," she explained. "The idea is to get the baby out with as little oxygen deprivation as possible, but in doing that, brachial plexus injury can happen. The baby's shoulder gets stuck behind the pubic bone and the nerves from the spinal cord can be strained or separated, which is what happened in Brennan's case. In a lot of cases, brachial plexus injuries can resolve on their own, but since Brennan's case is more severe and it's affecting his development, I'm going to recommend surgery," she finished gently.

"Surgery?" Mrs. Hoffman sucked in a breath, tears filling her eyes at the mere utterance of the word.

"I've spoken with Dr. Shepherd—he's the head of neurosurgery here," Meredith began. "He's performed the procedure before with a high success rate. Brennan would be in excellent hands. I've asked him to come down and speak with you about the procedure."

"He's so little," Mrs. Hoffman choked out, looking down at her son and wiping a few tears off her face as they fell.

"I know this is scary," Meredith said quietly, taking a seat on the bed next to Mrs. Hoffman and laying a hand gently on her back, "But the surgery can correct the problem. If Dr. Shepherd is successful, Brennan will go on to have a normal life."

"It's just," the woman breathed, touching the sleeping baby's hair and then his face, "He's my kid."

"I know," Meredith smiled, meeting Mrs. Hoffman's worried gaze. "Is there anyone you'd like to call?"

"My husband," she breathed immediately.

"I'll take you to a phone when you're ready," Meredith offered, "And then I can admit Brennan. We can get him into surgery tomorrow."

"Is this Dr. Shepherd good?" she asked anxiously.

"He's the best," Meredith assured her with a confident yet reserved smile. "He should be here in a few minutes to talk to you about everything and answer any other questions you might have."

"Dr. Grey, is he going to be ok?" Mrs. Hoffman asked as Meredith stood up to leave.

"That's why we need to do the surgery," she replied. "To fix that separation and make him ok." Her expression softened. "Dr. Shepherd has been very successful with this procedure in the past. We're very hopeful."

That evening, after a full, hectic day at the hospital, Meredith returned home. There had been no surgery today—five patients, but no cutting. That would come later in the week; the day's diagnoses led to one surgery after another, scheduled for almost every day in the coming week. Not all of the procedures got assigned to her, but enough of them did, and she eagerly anticipated seeing her name on the OR board again.

Derek pulled her aside earlier that afternoon, after he did the consult on her patient, and told her that he was leaving an hour early. He had two surgeries scheduled for the next day, and with no post-op patients to see, he was finished for the day. If it was ok, he thought he'd take Emily home early.

A few hours later, Meredith's shift ended and, climbing into her car, she felt a vague sense of success, despite the day's lack of OR time. It had stopped raining, and the warm summer air seemed like it had left with the rain. There was a definite chill to the air, not a breath of coldness exactly, but an unmistakable indication that the seasons were changing.

The gravel crunched underneath her tires as she pulled into the driveway beside the house and parked her car. Though it wasn't dark yet, barely even dusk, the light that streamed out of the kitchen windows wrapped around her heart. She could hear Emily and Derek talking when she opened the front door, and smiled when she heard Emily call for her in a high, sing-song voice almost immediately. She dropped her bag at the door and went to her.

Emily knelt on one of the dining room chairs, hunched over the table with a sloppy ponytail bobbing in the air as she colored vigorously. Her paper was set between her napkin and silverware, and two other empty place settings were already out and on the table.

Derek stood at the stove, conjuring up a savory aroma, poking at a pot of rice as fat dripped from the Foreman grill. He turned when he heard her come in, smiling and saying hello as she leaned over Emily first.

"Hey, Em," Meredith said, leaning over Emily from behind to take a look at her artwork. She kissed the top of Emily's head and ran a hand lightly over Emily's hair.

"Mommy!" Emily cried happily. She stood up on her chair, abandoning her picture, and turned around to face Meredith. She reached for her and pulled her closer. "You comed back."

"Of course I did," Meredith answered, tilting her head to the side as she smoothed Emily's hair back once more. "Did you have a good day today?"

"Mommy, we played all day," Emily nodded contentedly.

"You did? That sounds like a great day," she replied enthusiastically. "Where's your chair?"

She didn't see the booster seat they used at the dining room table to bring Emily up higher. Emily was sitting in her usual seat now while she waited for dinner to be finished, but the seat was nowhere to be found.

"Someone has decided that she doesn't need it," Derek sighed, indicating that there must have been a tantrum earlier that afternoon. "She's a big girl," he laughed. "This three years old thing is going to take some adjustment, isn't it, Bean?"

Meredith went to Derek next, the heel of her palm against his hip. He turned the stove off, and turned into her, caressing her for a moment. "What about you?" she asked between two short kisses. "How was the first day back?"

"Surgery," he grinned. "I can't complain."

Meredith helped Emily gather up her art supplies and set them aside while Derek finished the meal and put the food on the table.

"Did you have a good day?" Derek asked as he slid into his seat across from Meredith and Emily.

"I did."

"We admitted Brennan Hoffman this afternoon," he informed her while he spooned rice and a few green beans onto Emily's plate.

"I know," Meredith replied. She took two of the chicken breasts off the larger plate in front of her, transferring them both to her own plate. She cut up the smaller of the two into tiny bite-sized pieces and scooped them all onto Emily's plate for her. "I stopped by his room before I left."

After she rounded on her own patients, but before she left the hospital, Meredith stopped in peds. She wasn't technically on the Hoffman case anymore, having officially transferred primary care over to Derek earlier that day. She came by anyway, just in case either parent had questions or if there was anything else she could do. Mrs. Hoffman sat in a rocking chair, cuddling close with Brennan, but shook her hand and thanked her for everything. After answering a few new questions for Mr. Hoffman, Meredith quietly let herself out and promised reassuringly that she would check in on them in the morning.

"You did?" he asked.

She shrugged, and started to cut her own food. When she glanced up again, she found Derek looking at her with a curious sort of gleam in his eyes. "His parents were freaking out," she supplied.

"He's on the schedule for tomorrow afternoon," he assured her. "I'll be sure to speak with them tomorrow morning to see if they have any more questions."

"Do you think you can repair the nerves?" she asked.

Derek nodded, a gesture that was somewhat hesitant, though definitely there regardless. "Yeah, I think I can."

He took a few bite of his food. So did she. She reminded Emily to use her fork as the child ate heartily, chewing contentedly bite after bite.

"Do you want to scrub in?" Derek asked after a moment.

"Yeah," she sighed, a slow smile spreading across her face. "I do."


	15. I will be that witness to your life

_All you really need is someone to be here  
Someone who never lets you disappear  
And I will be that witness to your life_

* * *

A few weeks later, the damp chill of late autumn had settled in and life had returned to its usual routine. Emily didn't mention the beach as much anymore, not once her summer clothes had been packed away and her life had returned to what she'd known since she was a few weeks old. Just when Meredith and Derek were sure she had forgotten all about the summer though, Emily would point to one of the pictures on the mantle that they had had framed, and recall with poignant detail the memory of a vanilla ice cream cone dripping down her fingers or the spray of ocean water in her face. These mentions were cursory, just brief pauses in the whirlwind that was Emily's life to let memory slip in, but she seemed to remember just when Meredith and Derek needed to remember a little bit as well.

Fellowship information and applications started to come in for Meredith a few weeks after they returned home, with envelopes arriving from University of Washington, Seattle Children's, Seattle Presbyterian, Mercy West, and Seattle Grace, as well as Brigham and Women's in Boston, Vanderbilt in Nashville, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and Mount Sinai in New York. Stacks of thick envelopes built up on the kitchen counter, and over the past few weeks, Meredith had slowly started to make her way through them, reading everything carefully as the familiar anxiety of trying to decide the rest of her life set in. So far, she had been lucky. Dartmouth was right. Seattle Grace was right. But there had been limits then, she told herself one evening as she sat down to try to sort through these programs. Back then, she had to stay close, but not too close, struggling to negotiate the logistics of medical school and residency with a mother who didn't remember her.

She'd taken Emily home just before five that afternoon, just after Derek had an intern page her to let her know that he'd been called to an incoming head trauma needing an emergency craniotomy. Now, a little after 6:30 in the evening, Emily brought down some of her toys to play with in the living room, and Meredith went to the kitchen and brought the stack of paperwork in to work on for awhile.

The programs all seemed outstanding, she thought, flipping through them again. Spinal surgery and pediatric neurosurgery and trauma and everything she had honed an interest in over the past several years—somebody wanted her to come work for them to do it.

She slid the contents of the Johns Hopkins envelope out onto her lap. Pictures of pristine hallways, expensive equipment manned by dozens of doctors in full scrubs and surgical masks, and the prestigious-looking dome, graced almost every page of their information booklets. The letter, Meredith thought as she read over it again, was as flattering to them as much as it was to her. One of the best. Ranked by U.S. News and World Report. Premier surgical fellowship opportunity. We want you. Baltimore.

Meredith glanced over at Emily, cross-legged on the floor as she paraded a toy pony across the hardwood in one hand and held on to the accompanying doll in the other. She smiled as Emily babbled nonsense quietly to herself, and glanced back down at the paperwork in front of her. Gathering it up, she quickly sorted through the envelopes and divided them into two piles on the table in front of her. In one pile, she left Boston, Nashville, Chicago, and New York and stacked the opened Baltimore information on top. Pushing that pile aside, she reached with both hands for Seattle. She spilled the contents of the Seattle Grace envelope into her lap, took her pen, and started filling out the application.

She'd filled in the particulars—her name, date of birth, social security number, home address—when Emily stood up, still clad in her jeans and green sweater.

"Mommy, watch me!" she cried, waiting until Meredith looked up before she leaped into the air and then twirled herself around twice before plopping back on the ground.

"Where'd you learn that?" Meredith asked, somewhat amused at her acrobatics.

"On the TV," Emily offered proudly, throwing her hands up as she focused intently on Meredith's every subtle reaction.

"Oh, really?" Meredith prodded, unable to recall anytime in which Emily may have seen some kind of elaborate dance contest or figure-skating competition or anything of the sort. "Who let you watch TV?"

"You," Emily shrugged, and went back to playing with her toys.

"Oh," Meredith breathed quietly, racking her brain to try to remember when this would have happened. It couldn't have been in the past couple of days, when she and Derek had been able to leave the hospital at the same time and the television had proven unnecessary to keep Emily busy on those evenings.

She went back to her paperwork, getting into the meaty part of the application in which details about her undergraduate degree, her medical school, and the hospital in which she was completing her residency were required. She wrote _Dartmouth College_ under both undergraduate and graduate programs, and quickly scribbled the corresponding years of graduation next to each. _Seattle Grace Hospital, Seattle, Washington_ went under the 'Residency' heading, along with the year of her expected completion of the program and her scores on her intern exam.

A memory flickered across her mind as she started to describe the details of her surgical residency program, a little redundant, she thought, since Seattle Grace should know better than anyone what their own program entailed.

Last week, Emily, bored with coloring, bored with seemingly all her toys, whined for a good ten minutes while Meredith tried to fix dinner and return phone calls. She put the television on for her as a last resort and glanced in periodically, but hadn't kept an exceptionally close eye on the program itself.

She shook her head, and tried to concentrate on her application. _Extensive surgical experience with world-class instruction_. It's not like she watched something horrible; it wasn't even inappropriate at all. _Assisted on numerous advanced brain and spinal procedures; please see attached list_. But you weren't watching her. _Hope to further cultivate these skills as a surgical fellow._ She did something without you.

Meredith sighed and scanned down to the next section, in which she was asked why she wanted to pursue a fellowship opportunity at Seattle Grace.

"Mommy! Look!" Emily cried, springing up again. She thrust the plastic pony towards Meredith and pressed the button on the side that made its saddle light up, the same button that they'd pressed dozens upon dozens of times before. "Look, Mommy!" Emily said as she pressed it once more.

"I know, that's cool, Em!" Meredith replied, glancing up briefly. "That pony is great, isn't it?"

"I can do this too!" Emily interjected quickly, before Meredith even had the chance to turn back to her paperwork. She extended her arms and spun herself around, hard enough that she bumped the coffee table slightly with her hip before collapsing into a fit of giggles on the floor. "See?" she demanded, flushed and looking up at Meredith.

Meredith snorted a little, trying to keep her laughter in while Emily looked up at her expectantly. She glanced at the time, blinking at her from the DVD player across the room, and turned back to Emily. "I think it's time for you to start quieting down," she said, watching Emily's expression turn to a pout at the slightest hint of impending bedtime. "Do you want to get your pajamas on?"

"No," she sulked, gathering up her pony and her doll and resuming her play, seemingly all too willing to ignore Meredith until she put the unacceptable idea of bedtime to rest.

"Ok," Meredith sighed, willing to pick her battles for now. "Five more minutes and then pajamas."

Emily nodded absentmindedly, scooting over a few feet to grab a few other toys she had brought downstairs with her to incorporate them into her game. Meredith returned her attention to her application and tried to utilize the few minutes she had until Emily really had to get ready for bed.

_Why do you want to pursue a surgical fellowship at Seattle Grace Hospital?_

Meredith bit her lip while she tried to collect her thoughts. Why? Emily. Derek. Cristina. Because Baltimore and Nashville and New York weren't home. Because she could pack up their photographs and their dishes and even the couch she was sitting on and send them elsewhere in a truck, but the view from their porch and the floorboards where Emily took her first steps were not so easily transported. Because she spent over five years establishing herself here and she was not about to uproot the life she had worked so hard to keep and disrupt the child she would do anything to protect. Because Seattle Grace was the only program that was both worthy and safe.

She pressed her pen to the paper, wanting to write all these things down as quickly as they came to her, and lifted it mere seconds later. The Chief would be the only one on the board who wouldn't think she was way off-kilter if she really wrote those things, her real reasons, even though they were as much the truth as anything she could say about the caliber of the fellowship program.

Meredith sat, lost in her thoughts for a few moments, and when she finally took her pen to the paper again, she wrote about the professional relationships she had developed over the years and the unparalleled excellence of her residency program that she was certain the fellowship program would match or exceed.

When she finally looked up again, Emily was still playing with her back towards her, but the clock let her know that a half hour had passed from the time when she warned Emily that she had five minutes left.

 _Crap,_ she muttered to herself. "Em, come on, time for PJs," she announced hastily, sliding the application and miscellaneous accompanying papers and envelopes to the side before she stood up. She extended her hand towards Emily and motioned for her to come along.

Emily sighed and dropped her toys at her side before she scrambled to her feet and took Meredith's hand. She took the stairs slowly, one at a time. "I need a bath too?" she asked, grabbing for the railing with her free hand.

"Oh, I think so," Meredith replied. "That's the rule, isn't it?"

"No," Emily shot back immediately, yet casually, her eyes focused directly in front of her rather than on Meredith.

Meredith led Emily into the bathroom, started the water for the tub, and plopped down on the floor. She helped Emily strip off her clothes, and held her hand as she climbed into the tub, attempting to avoid the plastic cups and toys that Emily kept in the tub with her. Emily was quiet and cooperative as Meredith coaxed her head back under the faucet and soaked her hair.

"You want to do it yourself, Em?" Meredith asked, offering the upturned shampoo bottle to her as she turned off the faucet.

"Ok." Emily stuck out her hands, palms up, and Meredith squirted a dollop of Emily's shampoo, the no tears formula that she insisted on.

"Rub your hands together," she instructed, demonstrating on her own hands. "Like this."

Meredith let Emily take the lead for awhile. Emily stretched both arms up, her shoulder blades jutting out in the process, and rubbed the shampoo into her curly hair. She knit her brow in concentration, absentmindedly distributing the shampoo to only the middle of her head, scrubbing intently for a minute or two.

"Can I help you a little bit?" Meredith offered, waiting for Emily to nod before she reached forward and gently scrubbed a thick lather all the way around Emily's hairline. She turned the faucet back on, took one of the cups floating in the water, and filled it to the brim. "Close your eyes, Em." Emily responded immediately, tilting her head backward and squeezing her eyes shut while Meredith formed a sort of visor with her palm to shield Emily's eyes and poured cupful after cupful of water over her sudsy hair.

When the shampoo was all rinsed out, Emily righted her head and looked up at Meredith in earnest. "I can play?"

"For a few minutes," Meredith agreed, working up a lather on one of Emily's pink washcloths. Emily poured soapy water from cup to cup while Meredith gently wiped her down, trying not to disrupt her as much as possible.

"I all done?" Emily asked while she was still soap-covered, trying to get to her feet.

"No, you are not done yet," Meredith said quickly. "Sit back down please, and I'll rinse you off. Then you can be done."

Emily obediently plopped back down with Meredith's help in the few inches of bathwater. Leaning forward, she grabbed for a few different toys—some sea animals that floated in the water and could squirt streams of water, though Emily didn't know about that particular feature.

"Where's my Daddy?" she sighed as she plunged the blue whale under the water and then brought it up again.

"Daddy is at the hospital," Meredith replied, quickly rinsing Emily down, "But he'll be home soon."

"Before my bedtime?"

Derek had probably started the emergency craniotomy that barely had time for a CT at about 6:00 that evening. Meredith was admittedly running late with the bedtime routine, but even if she got Emily to bed at 9:30 instead of her usual 8:30, there was no way he would finish and get home before she fell asleep.

"He's doing his best," Meredith promised. "And if you fall asleep before he gets home, he'll wake you up to say goodnight, ok?"

"I guess," Emily replied, shrugging her shoulders. She smacked both hands lightly against the sheen of the water, pursed her lips, and opened her eyes wide as she stared up at Meredith.

Choosing the evening's pajamas shouldn't have been the ordeal that it was, Meredith thought, but when Emily shrugged off her towel after brushing her teeth and ran naked down the hall and back to her bedroom, Meredith really should have known.

Meredith sat in front of Emily, who had at least agreed to put panties on, and rifled through Emily's bottom drawer.

"No," Emily said indignantly, literally turning her back on the coordinating long-sleeved yellow shirt and pants with the blue butterflies. "The pink ones."

"Em," Meredith said tersely, holding out the first pink pair she saw in the drawer, sighing in frustration when Emily shook her head no. "Come on, stop."

"With the fwowers," Emily said stubbornly, and crossed her arms across her chest.

"These?" Meredith asked, holding out what Emily did not know would be the final choice, a pair of pink pajamas with white flowers that were virtually identical to the yellow pair in both cut and fabric. She shook her head in disbelief when Emily finally nodded, and raised her arms above her head for Meredith to slip the shirt on.

Emily sulked as she stepped into the matching pants, one leg at a time, while holding on to Meredith's shoulders for stability. Meredith frowned at Emily's expression, and the irritability that had overtaken her disposition.

Standing, she took the comb off of the top of Emily's dresser and perched on the end of Emily's bed. Emily remained where she was, quietly regarding Meredith with a tense stare. Meredith said nothing, but when she cocked her head, Emily came over to stand in front of her without incident.

"Em," Meredith prodded, running the comb gently through Emily's curls. "Hey," she said quietly, gripping Emily's waist and turning her around. She wore a blank expression, staring almost through Meredith. "Hey," Meredith repeated, smiling this time, "Can you show me something else? One of your other dance moves?"

Emily shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I not want to," she said, looking down.

A pang of guilt shot through Meredith. Emily had been all too happy to show her earlier, when she was only half-paying attention, and now, at three years old, it was as if she had learned to just be quiet. Don't bother Mommy while she's working. "Please?" Meredith asked again. "I really want to see how well you dance."

Emily eyed Meredith cautiously, almost as if she didn't quite believe her, and it was all Meredith could do to keep a smile on her face. "Please?" she asked again, touching her cheek ever so gently.

Emily's face brightened a little at the contact. She reached forward and grabbed for Meredith's hands. "You have to twirl me, Mommy!" she said, twirling herself before Meredith could help, spinning around once, then twice, while holding her hands.

"Did you learn this from the TV?" Meredith asked when she was finished, still holding her hands while she looked up at her, delighted. "No, my Daddy showeded me."

"He did?" Meredith asked incredulously. First the afternoon tea parties, and now the nighttime dance sessions—there was this whole secret world, full of little moments that Meredith didn't know about, but that she was all too happy to have revealed to her slowly, piece by piece.

"Like this," Emily instructed, still holding Meredith's hands as she climbed up onto her bare feet and swayed from side to side.

"Yeah?"

Emily nodded. "See?"

Meredith smiled, and ran a few fingers through Emily's damp hair. "Ok, what do you think? How about a book?" Meredith asked once Emily had decided to finish dressing. She glanced at the clock sitting atop Emily's dresser. She could still get Emily in bed relatively on time and maintain some semblance of routine.

Emily shook her head. "I can have TV?" she asked hopefully.

Meredith almost laughed at her earnestness in asking. She knew that television was generally not allowed so close to bedtime, but unfailingly, she always seemed to know exactly which days Meredith was likely to relent. Emily maintained her gaze of assumed demure sweetness, and finally cracked a smile when Meredith answered, "You can have TV or a book, not both, ok? A _little_ bit."

"I want Jasmine!" she exclaimed immediately.

Jasmine was the new obsession, replacing Cinderella just days before as the go-to princess in Emily's life when Kathleen mailed a package containing no less than 10 DVDs that her girls didn't watch anymore. Though Emily wanted to watch _Aladdin_ , and had good intentions to do so, she did not anticipate being so thoroughly terrified of Jafar. At his first major appearance, Emily screamed and scrambled into Derek's lap, and the movie had to be turned off. Meredith thought that was the end of it, but she was awakened a little after one that morning when Emily crawled into her bed, sobbing something about a dream where Jafar threw her into the cave.

"You're not going to get too scared?" Meredith asked.

"I am a big girl," Emily replied defiantly.

"I know," she replied, "But remember Jafar was a little bit scary last time we watched it?"

"I not get scared this time," she promised, bouncing up and down in anticipation. "It's just pretend, Mommy," she said seriously, repeating what she and Derek had told her in the middle of the night earlier that week.

"Ok, but we can't watch the whole movie, because it's almost bedtime."

Emily did fairly well for the first ten minutes of the movie, which could have been credited to the fact that Meredith fast-forwarded past the original scene that caused the nightmare to a much more upbeat part of the movie involving a blue genie explicating Aladdin's newfound opportunity.

Meredith went back to filling out her applications while Emily watched the movie. She kept an eye on the clock this time, glancing up every few minutes to make sure they were still on schedule. Barely ten minutes into the movie, the action had slowed, and Emily crawled across the couch cushions and onto Meredith's lap. If she knew she was disrupting, crinkling, the papers in Meredith's lap, she didn't care. She swung one leg over Meredith's lap, effectively straddling her as she brought her torso flush with Meredith's and let Meredith bear all her weight.

Meredith slid her papers off to the side a bit and glanced down at Emily. She laid her head on Meredith's chest, and alternated between quick glances up at Meredith and longer ones at the television. On screen, Jafar was plotting how he would take control of the kingdom.

"Is it too scary?" Meredith asked.

She was about to reach for the remote to turn off the television when Emily murmured breathily, "No."

"Just tired?" she asked, wrapping her left arm around Emily's waist. Emily nodded in response, and Meredith took a few seconds to pull out the corners of some papers that had gotten trapped under Emily or between them. She shifted all the paperwork to the side, all the way to the next couch cushion. She tucked a lock of Emily's hair behind her ear, and then wrapped both arms around the sleepy child.

Meredith let the movie go on for a few more minutes while Emily's breathing relaxed. She glanced at the papers stacked high on the coffee table in front of her in two piles, and then to her right at the half-finished application, the first of many. Emily snuggled a little closer in that moment. The paperwork could wait.

"Em?" Meredith whispered.

Emily grabbed at Meredith. Her eyes were closed, and Meredith knew she was probably looking for a lock of her hair to hold on to, but she couldn't reach one from this angle. In an apparent settlement, Emily clutched at the fabric of Meredith's t-shirt with her left hand, bunching up a handful of the material where it glossed just barely over her ribs, under her breast.

"How about this weekend, we carve a pumpkin?" she asked when she felt Emily respond just barely, cocking her head upward barely an inch.

"Not a scary one," she mumbled sleepily.

"Not a scary one," Meredith agreed. She settled deeper into the pillows and laid a palm flat on Emily's back.

"When is the weekend?"Emily asked, her words slow and heavy as she tried to cling to consciousness long enough to get a few last questions out.

"In two days," she responded quietly.

"Is two days soon?"

"Yeah, it is."

Emily drifted off within the next few minutes. Her body grew limp and her grip on Meredith's shirt slackened. A little bit of drool pooled in her slightly open mouth, dripping onto Meredith's shirt sleeve. Meredith managed to reach for the remote with minimal movement and turn the volume of the movie down low enough so that it was almost muted. She kept one hand on Emily and reached to her right to drag the Seattle Grace paperwork closer to her. Taking the pen back in her hand, she flipped through the application with her free hand, filling in more information.

She had just finished her Seattle Grace application and was about to try to stand up and carry Emily up to her bed when she heard a key turn in the front door. Derek bustled in, his briefcase slamming against the screen door. "Hey," he called from the foyer.

"Hey," she murmured, smiling tiredly when he came into the living room. "Shh."

"Sorry," he whispered, leaning down to look at Emily's sleeping face. He ran a hand over the back of her head, smoothing her hair down. "Hey," he said quietly, kissing Meredith.

"How was your surgery?" she asked.

He shook his head sadly, and sat down on the couch next to her.

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks," he sighed. "I'm sorry I'm so late. The guy's wife was coming from Spokane. She was away on a business trip; I wanted to wait until she got there."

"I'm sure that meant a lot to her," Meredith assured him.

"Yeah, well," he sighed again, "Nothing really helps. But I figured it was the least I could do. How was your day?" he asked, placing a hand over the hand Meredith kept on Emily's back.

"I assisted Dr. Weller with his corpus callosotomy," she said quietly, doing her best not to wake Emily up.

"Oh, that's great!" he exclaimed, squeezing her hand just a little.

"Yeah, no seizures yet, so we'll see," she said. She clasped her left hand with his right, threading her fingers through the spaces between his, and switched to holding Emily against her with her right hand. "Poor woman has a hell of a rehab ahead of her though," she said.

"She does," Derek agreed. "But it'll be worth it if she's not having grand mal seizures all the time."

"That's what she said."

"What do you say?" he asked.

Meredith thought back to Angela Oswald's pre-op that morning, when Dr. Weller had asked her to go in and answer any remaining questions and make sure that everything was in order to proceed that day. Angela didn't have many questions about the procedure itself; from the way she talked about it, she could have practically performed the operation herself. She even understood that she might not be able to speak her fiancé's name when she saw his face; she might not even be able to write out a shopping list at first. Her questions were about other things entirely, like how would he know she loved him if she couldn't say the words, and what could she do to make herself recover faster.

Angela talked about her fiancé; his name was Paul, and they met in a bar. She said she knew the story was cliché, but he came along just when she was sure she would never find someone. She had been terrified to tell him about her epilepsy, which she'd had since childhood, but when she finally did, he stayed by her side. And when the disease started to get worse about a year ago, he didn't run, but proposed instead. She was scared of this procedure, but didn't know any other way to try to ensure some semblance of a normal future.

"She's getting married next year," Meredith shrugged. "We did a good thing."

"Amazing surgery, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is," she whispered. "I, uh…," she looked up and grinned at him. "Emily and I danced tonight."

"Really?" he asked amusedly.

"She said she learned it on TV," Meredith continued, burying her nose in Emily's hair and breathing in. "And from you."

"Well, I don't know what she learned on TV, but we've been practicing a little bit," Derek admitted.

"Really?" Meredith asked, surprised, rubbing a few slow circles over Emily's back.

"Yeah, well…," he shrugged.

"I love you," she whispered, and inched forward as much as she could for a quick kiss.

"I love you too," he replied. He stood up then, and reached down for Emily. "Here, I'll put her in bed."

He scooped Emily into his arms. She whimpered a little at the movement, but, almost fluid in his arms, molded herself against his body. Her head rested limply on his shoulder, her arms hung at her sides.

Meredith stood up after Derek and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of her neck and back after hours in the same position. "Can you wake her up and kiss her goodnight before you tuck her in?" she asked, pulling her arms behind her back at odd angles. She brushed a few fingertips across Emily's cheek, and kissed the top of her head. "I told her you would if she was asleep when you got home."

Derek promised that he would, and carried her upstairs. Meredith gathered her papers off the couch and stacked them on the coffee table next to the others. While she tried to get organized, she mentally ran through her list of what she still had to do. The application itself was almost finished, but she needed several recommendations from her superiors, and she hadn't asked for them yet. She'd ask the Chief, of course, and Dr. Bailey, even though she wasn't a neurosurgeon. Should she include some sort of written explanation as to why she wasn't including a letter from the Head of Neurosurgery? He was her husband; it's not as if he could write a truly objective assessment of her skill. Dr. Weller and Dr. Krycek were fine doctors, and they would probably be more than happy to write letters to help her try to get whatever fellowship she wanted, but they weren't Derek Shepherd.

Once her papers were in order, she turned off the TV, curled up on the couch, and waited for Derek. She stared at the applications in front of her, wishing that she could somehow bypass the whole process. As she attempted to calculate a strategy, Derek came back downstairs, and took a seat next to her on the couch.

"She said, 'Daddy, I watched _Aladdin_ and I wasn't scared,'" he announced, situating himself flush next to her.

"If she sleeps in her bed tonight, I'll believe it," she replied. She sat up a little and curled into his embrace.

"Well, let's hope she does," Derek agreed. He kissed the top of her head, and rested his hand on her hip. Eyeing the stack of applications in front of him, he asked, "What are you doing?"

"Fellowship applications," sighed in frustration. "Trying to get through some of them anyway."

"Yeah?" he asked. "What looks good?"

"Seattle Grace has a good pediatric neurosurgery program. Dr. Wellerwas telling me about it, and it sounds pretty great. Lots of cases, and even working closely with Seattle Children's on some cases. Plus I heard the boss is pretty decent," she grinned.

"Yeah, I have heard good things about him," he smirked. "That sounds great, Meredith. I think you're going to love being a fellow. Better surgeries, more specialized cases. It'll give you more opportunities to show what you've got. Anybody else?" he asked. He reached for the stack of applications on the table in front of them and took the opened Johns Hopkins material off the top of the pile.

"That came from Johns Hopkins a few weeks ago. They have a spinal surgery program, and a pediatric neurosurgery program."

"This is pretty extensive," he said, pursing his lips. "Did you compile your summary of all the surgical procedures you performed in the past 12 months? And your five letters of recommendation?"

"No, and no," Meredith sighed. "Lie to me and tell me I'll get it done before the deadline."

"You'll get them all in before the deadline. And I'm not lying," he assured her.

"And then I have to pass the boards."

"Which you will," he promised emphatically. He reclined and inched a little closer to her. "Which one are you thinking of going for?" Derek asked, leafing through the literature they had sent. "Peds? Peds, right?" he pressed, looking up at her with the papers sitting on his lap.

"Actually, neither," she shrugged, scooping the papers up off his lap and sifting them together, putting them back on the table.

"Why not?" Derek asked incredulous. "Meredith, it's Johns Hopkins."

"Derek, it's in Baltimore," she countered.

"There's an aquarium. Lots of military history. A bad baseball team. Makes for a very nice spring and summer for Yankee fans like myself."

"Well, as wonderful as the idea of potentially decades of baseball-related glory would be for you, we can't just pick up and move, Derek," she said matter-of-factly.

"Why not, exactly?"

"You have a job," she replied, just a hint of sarcasm coloring her words. "I have a job."

"Ah, but you'd have a new job."

"And what about you?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm sure I'd find work," he replied playfully. Sifting through the non-Seattle pile of applications, he shook his head as he looked at each one. "Meredith, Vanderbilt, Chicago, Brigham and Women's, Mount Sinai, Johns Hopkins? This is amazing."

She just stared at him while he stared at the applications, and said nothing until he sensed the tone of her silence and looked up at her. She sighed, glancing back and forth between Derek and the pile of applications in his hands.

She thought about all the things that she could write on those applications, of all the reasons why she wanted those fellowships, why she deserved those fellowships. She had plenty to say about what she had learned as a resident at Seattle Grace Hospital, and how the surgical and clinical skills she learned there would surely bring her success elsewhere. In between learning how to impact aneurysms and delicately cut out tumors and repair nerves, she learned how to trust and love and let people in. She learned that the surgeon should never think herself too good or too busy to shave her eight-year-old patient's head for him because he asked. She learned how to make a life and a home with a lover, and how to realize that that lover was not just a lover, but a soulmate. She learned how to hold a baby and how not to buckle under the awesome responsibility of having someone truly believe that you were perfect. And she learned the layered meaning, and understood with new sincerity, of the directive to first do no harm.

"What about Em?" she asked finally, scrambling for the words that ultimately came out so easily.

"She would be ok," Derek promised quietly, adding more before she could say anything. "She would, Meredith. She's only three, so if we were going to move anywhere, that'd be the time, before she started school."

"I guess that's true," Meredith conceded, but as thoughts of Seattle flooded her mind, she asked, "But you could just leave Seattle? Just like that?"

"Meredith, I'm just saying," Derek murmured, setting the applications on the table. He took her hand, and looked her in the eye. "If you wanted to go, I'd go with you," he promised. "Wherever you wanted to go. I love Seattle, and I love our life," he added emphatically, "But if you got a job somewhere else, I'd go with you. That's all I'm saying."


	16. The real troubles in your life

_"Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday." - Baz Luhrmann_

* * *

Derek glanced out the window of his office, and then returned to gathering the last of his paperwork together, filing it neatly away in his briefcase. Autumn had been exceptionally cold and damp this year, and today was no exception. Rain poured from the sky, dripping down his window pane in thick rivulets. Traffic would be a bear today.

Standing up, he stretched a bit before shrugging his coat on over his street clothes. He only had one surgery today, but it was a meticulous spinal procedure that had taken hours of intense focus. He now had a crick in his neck and an ache in his lower back, and was looking forward to nothing more than returning home and doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the night.

He straightened his desk one last time, made sure his computer was off, and pushed his chair under his desk. As he was about to turn off his light and pull his door closed behind him, Paul Christianson, one of the new interns, rushed up to him with a huge stack of charts in hand. Christianson, a lean yet muscular guy with sandy hair and a baby face, used to run track for Duke before moving on to Emory for medical school. Though it was only a few months into his internship, he had proven himself to be quite an asset, and was sharp and focused for every one of Derek's cases.

"Dr. Shepherd, I just wanted to let you know that Mr. Astermann's blood pressure is stable and he has sensation in all four limbs," Christianson said quickly.

"Oh, excellent," Derek replied with a smile, pulling the door to his office closed behind him. "Are you on-call tonight?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ok, keep up with regular neuro checks every two hours," Derek instructed. He waited while Christianson glanced down at his vibrating pager and then back up at him.

"Sorry," he apologized quickly. "So should I order new lab work for Mr. Astermann?"

"Blood and urine cultures, and page me if he spikes a fever," Derek said. "And schedule another CT in the morning. We'll proceed from there."

"Ok, Dr. Shepherd," Christianson replied hurriedly, jotting down his instructions for the evening. "Have a nice night."

"You too, Dr. Christianson," Derek replied. "Nice job today."

Christianson hurried off down the hall, and Derek headed in the opposite direction towards the OR board. With his briefcase in hand, he paused and scanned the massive dry erase board in front of him. Hahn was scrubbed in on an aortic aneurysm repair, Mark was finishing up a rhinoplasty, and Meredith was probably a quarter of the way through a craniotomy. He knew she was on-call tonight, but their plan to call before bedtime was pretty much impossible now.

"Dr. Shepherd," Tyler interjected, leaning over the nurses' station and catching Derek's attention as he walked towards the elevators. "Dr. Grey wanted me to let you know that her patient from this morning became disoriented after surgery and they're back in the OR now after a new MRI showed another bleed."

"Ok, thanks for letting me know," he replied.

"No problem, have a good night."

"You too, Tyler."

Derek stepped onto a crowded elevator and ascended up to the fifth floor, around the first corner and into the daycare. Brenda, a pert, petite blonde woman who had been recruited from the pediatric ward to be the daycare coordinator, sat at a desk in an enclosed area to his left, filling out daily report sheets. He liked Brenda quite a bit, and loved that she seemed to remember nearly every detail about Emily. She was precise with her reports of each day, and made him and Meredith feel that even though they hadn't been there, they knew every single thing that happened each day. As a baby, he knew exactly how much Emily ate, how many times her diaper was changed, and when she napped. As Emily got older, he noticed that she came home with more little projects and stories from the day, and he loved that his daughter was always engaged in something stimulating. Brenda ran an excellent center up here, tucked away on the fifth floor, and he had to admit that he was a little nervous as to what they would do within the next year or so, when Emily would need to go to a real preschool.

"Hi, Brenda."

Brenda looked up from her work and smiled. "Oh, hello, Dr. Shepherd. Hang on one second, I'll go get Emily for you. Here's her report," she said, handing him a print-out of a run-down of Emily's day before disappearing into one of the rooms down the hall. "Emily, sweetie, your dad is here," he heard her say.

"Hi, Daddy," Emily said a moment later, bounding out of the room behind Brenda with a paper in hand. She wrapped an arm around Derek's leg and squeezed as hard as she could.

"Hey, Bean," Derek smiled, running a hand over her hair that Meredith had pulled into a tight ponytail that morning. "What do you say, you ready to go home?"

"Daddy, I made this picture," Emily announced, thrusting the paper she was holding up at him.

"Let me see." He took it from her and examined it carefully. She had colored what looked like a house, but could have also easily been a boat or absolutely nothing in particular. Either way, she was clearly very proud of it as she looked up at him expectantly and waited for a reaction. "Oh, this looks good, Em," he praised. "Should I hang it up in my office?"

"No, on the fridge," Emily replied, shaking her head, "Cause I only made one."

"Oh, ok, good idea," he nodded in amused understanding.

"You have to share it with Mommy," she explained seriously.

"You're right, the fridge is a much better idea then," he agreed. He took her things from her allotted cubbyhole storage area. She never brought much with her anymore, now that she ate the food and drank out of the paper cups that the daycare provided, and she didn't need extra diapers. Some children brought a comfort object, but Emily was not allowed to bring Bear anymore, after a disastrous night in which the toy was accidentally left at the hospital. Derek slung her bag over his shoulder and took her coat in his hand. "Did you have a good day today?" he asked.

"Me and Leah played restaurant," Emily said excitedly. She grabbed his hand and led him over to the back wall, where eight identical pictures of turkeys were colored in with all different colors. "And we colored turkeys cause of it's Thanksgiving."

"That sounds like a very fun day," Derek agreed appreciatively. "Which one is yours?" he asked, motioning to the turkeys on the wall. Each one had its artist's name written in clear print in the bottom right corner, but Emily always got some satisfaction of identifying exactly which one she had worked on.

"That one," Emily announced, holding Derek's hand with her right hand and pointing with her left to a very exotic-looking turkey with a purple body and green, yellow, and pink feathers.

"Good job," he grinned. "I think that one is one of the best ones." Emily beamed, and swung Derek's hand back and forth. "Ok, are you ready to go home?" he asked. "Say bye to Miss Brenda."

"Bye, Miss Brenda," Emily chirped in a sing-song voice as they headed for the door.

"We'll see you tomorrow," Derek said.

"I see you in the morning," Emily agreed, still sing-songy.

"Ok, I'll see you in the morning, Emily," Brenda replied, laughing a little.

"Bye, Brenda," Derek said more seriously. He held the front door open for Emily and she walked under his outstretched arm and out into the hallway. "Thanks!"

"Our pleasure, Dr. Shepherd," Brenda answered. "See you tomorrow."

Since no one was around on the fifth floor, Derek let Emily push the button for the elevator both outside and inside, reminding her that she was only allowed to press one button. The elevator stopped on nearly every floor anyway before it spilled them out onto the first floor and into the lobby.

"Daddy, pilgrims comed here a long time ago," Emily announced, walking in step with Derek.

"Yes, they did. Did you learn that today?"

"We readed a book about them," she explained. "They came on a boat and then it was the winter."

"Yes, and this was a very long time ago, so there was no one here to help them when they got here except the Indians."

"Yeah, and then they ate turkey and that's how come we got Thanksgiving," Emily concluded.

"That is pretty much it in a nutshell," Derek had to agree as they approached the front door. He took her aside, away from the main flow of traffic in and out and knelt down before her, dropping his briefcase and her bag at his side. "Come on, let's put your coat on."

"Are we gonna eat turkey?" Emily asked as Derek slipped her puffy navy waterproof jacket on her right arm and then her left.

"Well, Thanksgiving isn't for another week, but yes, I think we'll have turkey. Look up," he instructed so her zipper wouldn't pinch her chin, and zipped Emily's coat up to the very top.

"We gonna cook it?" she asked.

"No, Izzie is going to, I think," he replied, pulling her hood up over her hair and standing up.

"And then it goes in my belly."

"Yes," Derek said as they walked out the front door and into the rain. "Here, hold my hand, we're in a parking lot."

"Cause there's lots of cars here," Emily said knowingly.

"Yes, and people drive crazy because it's a hospital," Derek added. He grasped Emily's left hand firmly in his right, and looked left, right, then left again, waiting for an opening in the busy stream of cars. He hated leaving right around the nurses' shift change, but the daycare didn't stay open 24 hours a day so most days, they just had to deal with the traffic.

"You drive crazy," Emily announced, just a little bit teasingly, after they had crossed the major pathway in the parking lot in front of the hospital and started to make their way to Derek's SUV.

He looked down at her in surprise, squinting in the rain. "I do not," he said indignantly, unlocking the car from his keychain. "Who told you that?"

"My mommy."

"I see. That's very interesting because I happen to be an excellent driver."

"I can drive," Emily said confidently while she waited for him to open the door. He put his briefcase and her bag on the floor in the back.

"Aren't we supposed to have this talk when you're sixteen?" he laughed. He scooped her up into his arms and quickly buckled her into her car seat. He unzipped her jacket a little bit, knowing that the car often got a little stuffy and overheated on a long drive without the windows down. "Let's go home."

"What do you want for dinner tonight?" Derek asked after he had pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road. After listening to the traffic report on the radio, he slipped a CD into the player and the Clash filtered softly through the sound system.

"Mommy can pick it," Emily said with little interest.

"Actually, it's just going to be me and you tonight, Bean," he replied, glancing in the rearview mirror to gauge her reaction. "Mommy has to stay at the hospital tonight."

"Why?"

"Because someone got hurt and needed her help to fix their head," he explained.

"But she can kiss me goodnight?" Emily asked. She knew that that was usually the promise when she didn't go home with both parents, that whichever one who was staying would be home either in time for bedtime or would wake her up for a second after she had fallen asleep. Either way, she counted on a kiss goodnight from both parents, and it was rare that one of them wasn't around to deliver on that promise. As a senior resident though, and as someone who had been out for months, Meredith had been asked to take a few more nights on-call, at least at first, just to even things out, and she felt she had little choice but to accept. Derek had assured her that it wouldn't be a big deal, and that he knew it was just part of being a resident, and so far it hadn't been a problem.

"No, you'll see her in the morning at the hospital," Derek explained.

Emily leaned over to try to grab for a book sitting on the seat next to her. Flipping it open, she sighed before she started to leaf through the pages. "Ok."

After dinner, Derek and Emily sat at the kitchen table together while he caught up on reading and paperwork and she colored. They sat across from each other with her crayons meeting his scattered papers in the middle of the table. Derek sat in intense concentration while Emily knelt on her chair with her elbows propped on the table, intermittently staring into space for a moment or two before returning to whatever picture she was working on at the time. She worked through her coloring book, and when she finished one picture, she simply turned the page and started a new one.

"Daddy, what should I color next?" she asked, breaking the silence and demanding Derek's attention.

He looked up from his work. "Did you do a picture for Mommy's locker?"

Emily held up her coloring book, opened to a picture of a giraffe that Emily had colored green with orange spots. "Yeah, see?"

Derek smiled. "Ok, how about one for my office?"

"Ok," Emily nodded and set the book back down on the table. She leaned over the table, scrunching her shoulders as her tongue peeked out between her closed lips, and flipped through the pages. She settled on a new picture of a sailboat on the water under an exaggerated sun, and reached for the deepest blue crayon she could find.

"Em, when you're done with that one, we're going to do pajamas, ok?" Derek announced, returning to his work but resolving to keep an eye on her and make sure that when the boat picture was finished, to start to end the night.

"Ok," Emily replied in a high, lolling voice.

Derek furrowed his brow and went back to reading a back issue of one of the many journals he subscribed to. Even several months after their leave of absence, he still hadn't fully caught up on the reading he had missed. Taking a pen, he underlined passages and wrote notes in the margins of what he had to admit was a very engrossing article about a new study using stem cells in paralysis patients.

He glanced up quickly at the clock on the microwave and tried to picture where Meredith was in her procedure. When she asked him about the case at lunchtime, it had seemed pretty straightforward, but now that she was scrubbed in on a second surgery on the same patient, her speed would definitely be slowed at best as she tried to negotiate the new problems.

He stifled a smile as he thought about her, scrubbed in and sure as she meticulously probed and cut and suctioned in all the right places. She'd really become an excellent surgeon over the years—careful yet confident, tenacious yet tender—and he loved to think that he could be credited in even the smallest way. Often now, if he had some time during the day, he liked to go to the gallery and watch her. He would sit in the back and listen as interns, with faces practically pressed against the glass, made hushed comparisons to Ellis Grey. It made him even prouder, though, when her superiors drew the same comparisons and Meredith, though she smiled, always shook her head and politely said that no, she was not like her mother, not really.

It was one of the things he loved about her, this precision and intelligence and compassion that defined her idea of what it meant to practice medicine. It was one thing, but it wasn't the only thing, or even the biggest thing. But when he stopped to think about it, medicine was just one part of the whole of a shared passion for this life and this land and this child, and finally, for each other again.

His cell phone rang, vibrating itself across the table and practically into his hands. The name 'Kathleen' scrolled across the cover of his phone, and Derek sighed. Ever since Halloween, when he'd emailed pictures of Emily dressed in full scrubs with her hair tied back in a scrub cap, he was convinced that his sisters had formed some sort of tag team to convince him that Christmas was too far away and they really should come for Thanksgiving because Emily was getting so old and it had been way too long since they got to see her. Though he tried to explain to them each time they called why two cross-country flights in five weeks with a three-year-old in tow had the potential to be exhausting, they wouldn't be his sisters if they weren't relentless.

He flipped the cover of his phone up, and cradled the device between his shoulder and his ear. "Hello," he said, gathering his reading up into a pile.

"Hey, Derek." The warm, honeyed voice of his oldest sister spilled over the telephone line.

"Hey, Kathleen, how are you?"

"I'm doing ok," she said.

"Before I forget," he interrupted before she could ask him how he was. "Can you let Mom know that we just booked our flight for Christmas? We can only stay a few days, but we'll be there the 23rd and we'll leave on the 28th."

"I'll tell her."

"And Nancy said we could stay with her," Derek continued hastily, "But feel Mom out. See if she wouldn't mind us staying at the house. Not that I don't appreciate Nancy's offer, but you know, five days could be a lot."

"I'm sure she wouldn't mind, Der," she assured him, and took a quick breath. "Listen, I need to talk to you about something."

"Kath, I'm sure Mom put you up to this," he said with a chuckle, "And I don't mean to shoot the messenger, but we really can't come for Thanksgiving. We took that leave of absence, so we're pretty limited to what we can do as far as holidays and time off for the rest of the year."

"No, we understand, it's ok," Kathleen replied hurriedly, "I was actually calling about Mom."

"Oh, ok," he said. He laughed a little, the way he always used to when he won an argument with all four of them over little things like watching a baseball game on TV instead of a soap opera-ish primetime drama. He filed away the last of his papers, sifting them into his briefcase all in one pile. Standing up, he glanced over Emily's shoulder, briefcase in hand, to look at her picture as he talked. She had finished the boat and the sun, and was now working on adding in some fish to an otherwise boring sea. "I think maybe instead of five smaller gifts for Christmas, we should go in on something big this year," he said. "Maybe a trip or something. She's always saying she wants to take a cruise."

"Yeah, maybe," Kathleen sighed.

Derek kissed the top of Emily's head, and went to the living room to put his briefcase by the door. "I'll start looking into it. I'll send an email out to you and the girls. Maybe Alaska—"

"Derek," Kathleen said abruptly, cutting him off completely. "Mom had a mammogram done last week, and they found a lump," she continued in a wavering voice. She took a haggard breath, pausing for a second. Derek stood in the middle of his living room, absolutely still, holding his cell phone with his hand now. "They got the biopsy results back today and—" Kathleen went on, her voice breaking as she said, "It's a stage one, maybe a stage two, carcinoma."

Derek sank into the nearest chair, the armchair with the ottoman that he liked to sit in with Emily to watch television. He sat right on one of her small dolls, plastic parts jutting out and poking his him, but he barely felt it at all. He stared at the spine of the book Emily had wedged between the arm of the chair and the cushion—The Giving Tree. A full thirty seconds went by while he listened to his sister try to stifle her crying and he stared at the book with such intensity before he asked, "Wait, what?"

"Breast cancer, Derek," she said. He heard her take a hiccupping breath, and he imagined her on the other end of the line, sitting very much like he was, helpless and head in hands.

"No, I know what it is," he said, dazed. He stared at the green spine of the book and its white letters until the colors blurred, not with tears but simply a total inability to focus. "Just," he exhaled loudly, in disbelief, "What?"

"We're meeting with the oncologist again on Friday," Kathleen told him. Her voice was weak, trembling in the middle of the sentence, but she didn't break.

"What did they say?" Derek asked. He was hunched over in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees with one hand in his hair and the other barely holding onto the phone.

"They want to schedule the surgery for next week," she said, a little stronger for a moment.

"Surgery," Derek breathed. But next week is Thanksgiving, he wanted to say. Emily colored a turkey. I read her daycare report; they're going to make pilgrim and Indian hats next week. It's a day for giving thanks, and how am I supposed to do that when my mom is having surgery? Can't we go back to you guys all bugging me to come home for Thanksgiving?

"And then chemo," Kathleen added, unable to get out even a few words without her voice shaking dangerously. He heard her sniff and cough a little bit, and then say, "He wants to start treatment right away."

"Who is her oncologist?" he asked.

"Eric Farrell. He's at Greenwich Hospital."

He shook his head. "I know somebody good at Sinai," he said. He tried to offer, but it came out more as a demand. "Nora Hadley. She's really good. She was a friend of ours years ago. Well, really more Addie's friend than my friend, but she would help," he assured her with the only semblance of confidence he could muster. "We could get Mom in there."

"Derek, Greenwich is a good place for her to be," Kathleen said. She took a deep breath, and paused for a few seconds as if to try to regain just a hint of control. "Farrell seems good," she assured him, "I really liked him."

"Ok," he conceded. "Ok, ok. When is the surgery?"

"They want to do it sometime next week, but they don't know when yet," she said. "With the holiday and everything. They have to run more tests first."

"Right. You said that. That makes sense." This makes no sense, he thought. None of this makes one damn bit of sense. He sat there for a moment, trying to think of what an appropriate thing to say would be. He had nothing.

"I think she's leaning towards a mastectomy," Kathleen said, offering up what little information she had in an attempt to fill up the silence. "We told her to wait to see what the tests say."

"No, yeah, that sounds like a good idea," he replied after a slow, deliberate breath.

"They said they're going to be really aggressive with the treatment. He said she has a good chance."

"A good chance." He exhaled loudly. It was preposterous that something that should have been so certain, like his mother's continued existence on this planet, would be rendered only a chance in an instant.

He wished that Kathleen would say something therapeutic. Of course it was her calling to tell him this news; she had been the caregiver since she was fourteen years old. She was the one who told him then, and even now, thirty years later, that it was ok to miss Dad. She was the quietest one of the five women who had an opinion for decades on where Derek should go to school, what girls he should date, and who his friends should be. She was the only one who thought maybe it would be good for him to go to Seattle. Though she wanted him to come home often now, he knew that she understood that the space was good for him and the visits were almost more about Emily than about him. She was the one who always knew what to say; it's what he counted on her for, for years. Her undergrad degree in psychology and her medical degree from Yale ensured that she was trained to always know what to say. He gripped the fabric of his pants at the knee and wished again that she would say something shrinky, but all she could manage was an exhausted, "Yeah."

"Why didn't you tell me she had an abnormal mammogram?" he demanded.

Kathleen sighed. "She didn't want you to worry."

They fell into a stressed silence, where neither knew quite what to do, but both felt it was premature to hang up when so much remained left to say. The memory of him and his four sisters curled up in his parents' bed together, their mother sandwiched in the middle and the funeral flowers still fresh downstairs, flashed through his mind. His mind started to drift; he heard Emily chattering a little bit to herself in the other room, felt the slight weight of the phone in his hand, even shifted to stop the small plastic toy from embedding itself in his thigh, but despite that, he still felt strangely not there.

"I'm really scared." Kathleen's ragged breath on the other end of the line brought him back. Her admission brought him to his knees.

"Yeah," he agreed, his eyes welling up with tears for the first time. "Yeah, me too."

He heard Emily's chair scrape across the hardwood, and her bare feet hit the floor and run into the living room. "Daddy, look."

She held up her coloring book, opened to the page she had been working on with the seascape scene. She had used a deep blue on the water, a few scraggly scribbles meant to fill in the whole of the sea, and a mustardy yellow on the sun and its rays. She made the sailboat red, and the fish in the water pink, and everything looked exactly as it should. No wake, absolute peace.

"That looks so nice, Bean," he said, trying to muster up a smile and steady his voice. "Thank you."

"Is that Emily?" Kathleen asked.

"Yeah," Derek replied. He adjusted his position a little so Emily could crawl into his lap. She stared at him with a confused look on her face, cocking her head and seemingly staring right at the tears still welled up in his eyes. She dropped the coloring book on his lap, leafing through it a little after settling into his arms.

"Give her a kiss for me," Katleen said.

"I will," he promised. He wrapped an arm around Emily's waist, and she waited patiently, quietly, while he asked his sister, "How's Mom?"

"She's good," Kathleen sighed. "Well, she says she's good. Maggie wanted her to come live with her and Paul for awhile, at least for the treatment. We're all going to kind of help out with that, but Maggie just didn't want her to be alone in the house, but Mom said she would be fine." She steadied herself and took on a tone that was gentle yet authoritative, kind of like his mother's. "She said that we're going to beat this and that's that and she wasn't scared."

Fear stabbed at his gut as he thought back to September. His mother sounded so sure in the car on the way home from the airport, like she was as grateful to be able to pass on a secret as Derek was to learn it.

_I didn't want you to know I was scared. You were scared enough._

"She said she wasn't scared?" he asked.

"That's what she said," Kathleen said almost proudly.

He didn't mean to doubt his mother's bravery. He was sure that she had gone into the meeting with the doctor with such an air of confidence. He had always known growing up that his mother could be lighthearted, and she knew not to sweat the small stuff. But he also knew that when it came time to be serious, she meant business. No nonsense.

But his somewhat childish idea that his mother could never be shaken had all but disappeared. If they hadn't seen her vulnerable yet, they all would soon.

He stopped for a second, felt Emily squirm a little and then settle in, and thought back to September and what he had learned. It's ok to be scared, but don't let that fear worm it's way into your child too, not when they already have things to be afraid of.

Protect your children. I didn't want you to know I was scared. You were scared enough.

His breath caught in his throat. Mom is scared. Mom is scared. Mom is scared.

"I just," he started to say, but then paused again, scrambling to come up with the right words. He saw cancer all the time. All the time. And, somehow, he was at a complete loss to comprehend this. "They're sure?" he finally asked. "It's definitely malignant?"

"Der," Kathleen murmured. "Yeah. It is."

"What was her hormone receptor status?" he asked immediately.

"I'm not sure."

"What about her lymph nodes?" he pressed.

"They don't know yet, Der," Kathleen replied gently. "They're going to be doing more tests this week."

"We need to know, Kath," Derek said, more gruffly than he meant to. "I'm getting this guy on the phone tomorrow. We have to hit this hard."

"We're going to, Derek," she assured him.

"No, I know," he said quickly. "But, Kathleen, it's Mom."

"I know," Kathleen whispered.

Emily squirmed again in his lap, scrambling to her knees and kneeling on his lap. The coloring book fell to the floor. "Daddy, I have to take my bath now?" she asked.

"In a few minutes, Bean," he replied, trying to get her to sit down so her knees wouldn't bore into his flesh.

"But I done my picture," she whined impatiently.

"I know, I'm just on the phone right now," he replied. He cradled his phone between his shoulder and ear, and lifted her off his lap with both hands. He picked up her coloring book off the floor and handed it to her, asking, "Can you clean up your crayons for me?" She reluctantly went back to the kitchen and he heard her begin to put her crayons back in the box. "Sorry," he murmured, returning to the conversation with Kathleen.

"It's ok."

"We'll come out for Thanksgiving," he decided in that moment. He could figure out the details later, but after five years of wanting space, needing time away, all he wanted to do was be at home.

"Der, you just said you weren't going to be able to get out of work," Kathleen said impatiently.

"That was before I knew my mother had cancer," he shot back defensively.

"Mom doesn't want us to worry," Kathleen tried to explain. "She wouldn't want you to turn your life upside down to come out here on such short notice."

"My life was just turned upside down anyway," he said, raising his voice a little, before growing quiet again. The phone in his hand suddenly felt like it weighed fifty times more than it did. He fought to keep it pressed to his ear as he murmured, "God, I can't believe this."

He heard Kathleen take a breath, sniffle a bit, and then breathe again. He felt his heart pound in his chest, and realized he had never seen Kathleen come unglued.

"Last night," she began, "After Mom called us, we had the guys watch the kids and we went to the bar. We're all freaking out," she admitted tearfully and fought to compose herself again. "Hang on, I have another call."

"Ok," he sighed.

He waited for a moment, and Emily padded into the living room again. She stared at him expectantly, still wearing the long-sleeved blue dress and grey tights that Meredith had dressed her in this morning. "My crayons are in their box, Daddy."

"Ok, thanks for cleaning up. Can you go upstairs and pick out the pajamas you want to wear? I'll be up in a few minutes to help you get your bath."

Emily nodded and walked past him towards the stairs. The sound of her climbing up had nearly stopped when Kathleen clicked back in.

"It's Mom, Derek," she said. "Can I call you back in a little while?"

"Yeah, sure," he replied. "Actually, you know what, I have get Emily into bed," he sighed. "Meredith is on-call tonight. Can I call you in the morning?"

"Leave me a message at the office," she responded immediately, at once the gentle big sister again. "I have patients all day tomorrow, but I'll call you as soon as I get a chunk of time."

"Ok," he breathed.

"Give Emily a hug and kiss from me," she continued, wistful and worried. "We can't wait to see her, Derek."

"Yeah," Derek agreed. "Yeah, I can't wait for you to see her too."

"I'll talk to you tomorrow," she assured him, easing him out of the conversation. "Bye, Derek."

"Ok," he sighed, "Bye."

Bath time and bedtime felt quieter to Derek that night, not because Emily was particularly subdued. She kept up her habit as of late of trying to postpone bedtime for as long as possible by proving that she was still very much awake, but Derek felt like the thoughts in his head were so much louder than any of the actual spoken words coming from Emily. They read The Giving Tree before bed, at Derek's request more than at Emily's. As he perched on the edge of her bed, turning the pages and reading in a slow, gentle voice, he thought of his father, and then of his mother. She said she wasn't afraid, but as he held his baby, he had to think that if his mother loved him and his sisters even a fraction as much as he loved Emily, she must be terrified. If not for herself, for her five children, though these children were all well into their forties.

Once Emily finally surrendered to the idea that it was bedtime, he kissed her goodnight, turned her lights off, and pulled her door halfway closed behind him. First, he went downstairs, thinking that he would watch a little television and try to unwind, but as soon as he sat back down in the living room, his exhaustion hit him, coming from behind and knocking him flat on his face. He trudged back upstairs, and shucked off his clothes, crawling into bed in his favorite sweatpants, but after nearly an hour, he still couldn't fall asleep.

He hadn't thought about his mother dying since he was eleven years old. He remembered the day the idea crossed his mind vividly. He and his sisters had returned to school not long before, but his mother either hadn't started work yet or hadn't begun to look for a job; that part he couldn't remember. He was in Mrs. Beaman's geography class when his thoughts started to wander, as they had been doing quite often lately. He wondered where he would go, who would take care of him and his sisters, if his mother were to die too. Maybe there would be another day where Uncle Alan would come to school and he'd be called down to the principal's office to find him there with all four of his sisters. They hadn't known the first death was coming; how could they ever predict the second? He thought maybe Kathleen could take care of them if that happened, but quickly dismissed that thought, as Kathleen didn't know how to do laundry or cook anything besides grilled cheese sandwiches and pancakes. It was then that he realized that there was no one to take care of them besides their mother, not really anyway, and if she were to go, then who knew what would happen to them? The thought prompted him to raise his hand and ask to go to the bathroom. After he didn't return to class, he eventually ended up back in the principal's office, and his mother came to pick him up. The look on her face said she knew that he wasn't sick at all, but she put her arm around his shoulders and led him out to the car. It took him all day to tell her what was really wrong, but when he did, she smiled, though she had tears in her eyes, and he believed her wholeheartedly when she promised that she was not going anywhere.

But cancer could take you places. He had seen hundreds of times how it plunged even the strongest of people into the bowels of the most horrible sickness, so bad that by the end, some welcomed death as relief. He'd seen parents leave the hospital without their children, and children even older than he was leave broken without their parents. There would be surgery. Chemotherapy. Probably radiation as well. Procedures and protocols that were so commonplace, yet so uncomfortably personal once they had become so.

By midnight, Derek had moved out of bed and back downstairs. He thought that he would try to eat something, but one bite of a turkey sandwich had turned his stomach and almost sent him running for the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the couch now, without the television on, back rigid and straight and hands on his knees as he stared ahead at nothing. He tried to look at this as a diagnosis, as a battle and a treatment protocol. As something long-term.

By one o'clock, all he wanted was Meredith. He wanted her arms around his waist and her hands on his back, chin pressed into his shoulder as she held him close. He wanted to tell her, and he wanted her to already know, because in a way, she did. She knew something about getting a diagnosis that made you spiral down into near denial. The diagnosis thing was new to him. He'd done the ruptured aneurysm and the spontaneous abortion, but to be told the problem before it had already reached critical mass and ended tragically was something new entirely. He thought about Ellis, and how he had only been living with his reality for all of a few hours. How had Meredith done this for years?

He almost paged her three times by two-thirty, hanging up each time before the last number or two was dialed because he realized he wanted her here, not there and on the phone with him. But by three o'clock, he had called the nurses' station, and at four, he did it again. Both times, he asked the night shift nurse to please not tell Meredith that he had called. He knew that if she got messages from him in the middle of the night, she would worry about Emily and immediately assume something was wrong.

He spent the hour from three-thirty to four-thirty in Emily's room, sitting quietly on her floor and watching her sleep. He didn't dare touch her for fear of waking her, but felt some peace in simply listening to her steady breaths.

He didn't cry until six-thirty, when the sun started to peek out from the crease of the horizon. He was shivering, sitting outside on their back deck for almost a half hour, just waiting, and when the sky started to pink up, the shaking from the cold turned into shaking from the tears. He fought the urge to page Meredith again, though he couldn't help but fervently wish that someone else, anyone else, had been on-call tonight. He gave himself ten minutes to cry before he went back inside.

Easing Emily's door open, he tiptoed inside. She had her comforter pulled up to her neck, her hands gripping the end of the fabric to keep it close. "Hey," he murmured, shaking her shoulder back and forth. He smiled when she opened her eyes and looked right at him. "Hey," he said again, softer this time, "It's time to get up, ok?"

She nodded and closed her eyes again, and Derek let her lie there for another minute or two. Just as he was about to wake her again, her eyes fluttered open on their own. She looked at him and, in a quiet, sleep-laced voice, said, "It's time to wake up, Daddy."

The morning routines and the drive to the hospital were nothing special, virtually the same as every other morning. Derek fed Emily, got her dressed, and loaded her into the car for the drive to Seattle Grace. The only hiccup that particular morning was that Emily forgot to bring the pictures she made the night before with her, but fortunately she realized it before they pulled out of the driveway.

Like every other morning, Emily walked into the hospital like she owned the place, and Derek couldn't help but smile as she took confident strides forward, knowing exactly where to go. He had held it together all morning, at least as best he could, though when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he got dressed, he had to admit that he looked like hell. Eye drops in bloodshot eyes, a little hair product, and a dress shirt and tie helped to disguise as much as he could. He had tried to push all thoughts of his mother and his family out of his head temporarily, at least while he fixed Emily's bowl of cereal and chose weather-appropriate clothing for her for the day. He repeated to himself over and over, in time with the cereal pouring into the bowl and the dresser drawers opening and closing: be normal, be normal, be normal.

He was kind of proud of himself for not dragging Meredith into this when she couldn't be with him right away. He drew a strange kind of strength from the idea that he had been able to be alone all night. But now that he was back in the hospital, and he knew Meredith was in the building and could be with him in a matter of moments, all he wanted to do was find her. He didn't relish the idea that she knew exactly what he was going through, but he couldn't help but want her. He could appreciate the empathy that she would provide, but all he really wanted was for her to stand with him and not allow him to feel so utterly alone.

The daze of fear and expectant grief had started to set in again, and he started to worry that he couldn't keep it together forever. Emily's five fingers squeezed firmly around his two, keeping him grounded and moving. He merely followed as she led him up to the fourth floor, a routine she knew by heart.

They stepped off the elevator and Meredith was right there, updating some charts and preparing for rounds. Her hair was still tied back from surgery, and she was still wearing her scrub cap. She must have only just gotten out of surgery not too long before, as she hadn't even changed back into her lab coat yet. Her shoulders sagged a little, and she leaned against the counter for support while she wrote.

"Meredith," Derek choked out as strongly as he could. When he saw her, he felt relief for the first time since early the night before, but he wasn't sure if it was because of her or because he could feel his energy leaving him and he was glad they had managed to find her without really looking.

She looked up from her paperwork and gave them a tired smile. She had been up all night too; her eyes were just slightly unfocused and her movements were slower. Coffee. They both needed coffee.

"Hey," Meredith murmured. Her voice was a little weaker, the way it got when she went without sleep. Was his voice weaker too? He hadn't noticed.

Emily let go of his hand, and ran toward Meredith, while Derek's arms hung limply at his sides as he moved forward. They kissed briefly, and she frowned when he stepped back and didn't say anything more. Meredith groaned a little, bending down to kiss the top of Emily's head. Emily wrapped her arms tightly around both of Meredith's legs while Meredith smoothed down her hair. "Hi, Em," she said. "Did you have a good night?"

"Mommy, I made this for you," Emily said excitedly, letting go of Meredith only to thrust the papers she was carrying up at her.

Meredith took a brief look at the first, then the second, and smiled tiredly. "I love it!" she said with all the excitement she could muster. "Thank you, Em. Both of these are mine?"

Emily stood on her tip-toes and peered up, grabbing at the one with the boat. "No, that one is for my Daddy."

"Oh, I see." With some effort, Meredith picked Emily up and set her down on the countertop. She smiled tenderly at Emily and kissed her forehead again.

Derek mustered up an exhausted half-smile, but the grief bubbled up inside him and he had to fight to keep the words from slipping out. Wait, he repeated over and over to himself while Emily talked to Meredith. Wait until she's gone.

"You fixed a guy's head in the nighttime," Emily said, scratching a fingernail across one of the closed charts.

"Yes, I did," Meredith agreed.

"Cause that's why you couldn't kiss me goodnight," Emily continued, half stating and half asking.

"Yes."

"And that guy is all better now?"

"Yes, he is."

"Sometimes I am a doctor," she murmured, reaching for the stethoscope draped around Meredith's neck. "I can fix things."

"I know," Meredith said. She glanced up at Derek, and locked eyes with him for just a second. Wait, Derek repeated in his head again and again. Wait until you're alone. Do not make a scene. Meredith frowned slightly, but returned her attention to Emily when Derek said nothing. "Should we go upstairs to see Miss Brenda?" she asked.

"I sink so," Emily nodded.

She looked at Derek again and he tried to give an encouraging smile, but he thought it probably looked all wrong. "Ok," Meredith sighed, taking Emily's hand and letting her hop down onto the floor. "Let's go."

Derek followed them upstairs, carrying Emily's bag, quiet while Emily continued to chat to Meredith the whole way up. After they dropped Emily off at daycare, Meredith laced an arm through Derek's for a moment while they walked back to the elevator, but he felt strangely solid and rigid in her arms.

"Hey," she murmured, once they were standing in the elevator alone and headed back down to Derek's office and the residents' locker room. "Are you ok?"

"I just didn't sleep much last night," he mumbled, leaning against the same wall as Meredith, inches away and fighting to keep the words from coming out here on the elevator. She was right here, all he wanted all night, but the floor numbers above them kept lighting up one by one, and he knew the doors would open soon. Just wait until you get to your office, he told himself. This is not an elevator confession.

"Em didn't sleep well?" Meredith asked. She turned a bit to face him better, concern crossing her features.

"She did," he assured her. "I just couldn't."

"Are you sick?" she asked. She touched his arm and waited for him to answer. When he didn't right away, she cocked her head to the side and pressed on. "What's wrong?" she asked softly.

He looked at her, earnest and ready before him. 'To have and to hold' meant 'through it all;' he knew that much, but he sucked in a breath and his eyes filled with tears as he saw her live it, in even the tiniest way, after being stuck in surgery all night, exhausted and nearly spent. With Emily's two pictures in one hand, she closed the other around his as he gripped the bar along the elevator wall.

In that moment, he couldn't wait anymore. His office was probably a two minute trip away, the residents' locker room even closer, but she was here and looking at him, realizing that something was not right. She had her fingers laced through his. The panic remained. He was still on the opposite end of the country, rendered absolutely helpless and ineffectual. But she had his hand in hers; she was his other half.

"Derek," she murmured. "What is it?"

"Kathleen called last night," he said in a wavering breath. "My mom has cancer."


	17. This world you're in now

_Just lay it all down._   
_Put your face into my neck and let it fall out._   
_I know, I know, I know._   
_I knew before you got home._   
_This world you're in now,_   
_It doesn't have to be alone,_   
_I'll get there somehow_   
_Cause I know, I know, I know_   
_When even springtime feels cold._

* * *

"My mom has cancer."

As soon as Derek pushed those words past his lips, Meredith gripped his hand that much tighter. A few of the tears in his eyes spilled over, and he looked down, covering his face with his hand. She heard him take a deep breath, unable to say more, and she moved closer to him, stunned at the news herself.

"Derek," she whispered. Her eyes watered too, more for Derek than for Mary. Not that she wasn't upset about her mother-in-law and worried about the battle she was facing, because of course she was, but she could count on her fingers the number of times she had seen Derek cry, and that's what really broke her heart.

She didn't even have time to pull him into a hug when the elevator doors opened a few seconds later. Derek's head jerked up and she followed his gaze to look out into the busy hallway, into the faces of about a half dozen doctors, nurses, and techs waiting to get on the elevator.

"Derek," she said again, this time much more urgently. His office was barely a two-minute walk away, and, as he seemed to be barely functional, she took it upon herself to get him from here to there as quietly and normally as possible. Having some experience in public breakdowns to the point of near catatonia, her attention instinctively shifted to helping him avoid the relentless gossip that was set into motion when a scene was made.

She held on to his hand, and left the elevator, giving him no choice but to follow. She felt some curious eyes boring into the back of her head, but she didn't give an inch and wouldn't look back. She looped an arm around Derek's waist and walked with him down the hallway and around the corner to his office. They didn't talk, and he didn't cry, but when she looked up at his face, the tears were still there in his eyes, welled up but staying put.

"Keys?" she asked him gently when they reached his office. He dug into his pocket and handed her his keys. She tried the first key that she didn't recognize as being for the car or the house, and fortunately, the door swung open immediately.

He dazedly walked in, allowing Meredith to close the door behind them, and leaned against his desk, firmly gripping the mahogany with both hands. She looked at him standing there, letting the desk bear most of his weight, as he kept his head down and drew a deep breath. He hadn't said anything since he managed to get those few words out moments before, and when he finally did look up at her, he looked lost.

She swallowed hard, and her eyes filled with tears when she realized that the face in front of her now wasn't the man she married. Well, he was, but he looked more like the boy she had only met through photographs of awkward homecoming dances and jazz band competitions. The daring gleam in his eye, the strong stance—the things that exuded sex and confidence, the things that made him so inexplicably Derek, had been stripped away.

He looked afraid, like he realized that this was it; it might be the beginning of being, like, really alone. He'd always had a crutch to fall back on back east, and though he often disagreed with his mother, and found himself needing space from her as he broke away from the life his family knew, he had never seriously considered her mortality. He reminded Meredith of herself on the day that her mother called her home from Europe by telling her very matter-of-factly that she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and would need her help.

"When did you find out?" she asked.

"Last night." She bit her lip and nodded. Last night, when she was on-call. She scanned her memory of the night before, what she had done, who she had talked to. Had she missed his page? She was sure she hadn't, but the thought of him alone in their house last night made her ache a bit. That first night after the diagnosis, she sat up all night as well, trying to figure out how exactly she was going to deal with this. Granted, the boys and the tequila did reappear in the following weeks and helped at least a little to alleviate the stress.

"What kind of cancer?" She stood in front of him, and slid her hand up his thigh, rubbing his muscles gently.

"Breast cancer," he replied, and took another deep breath to try to steady his voice. He looked her in the eye. "They don't know how advanced it is yet. They still have to do more tests." Meredith simply cocked her head to the side a bit, kept quiet, and waited for him to continue. "They want to get her in for surgery soon," he sighed. "Mom is thinking about a mastectomy, but she doesn't know yet."

"Wait to see what the tests say," she offered.

"Yeah, that's what we told her." He looked down at his feet and then back up at her, and in a wavering voice repeated, "My mom has cancer."

Meredith nodded, moving her hands from his thighs to his waist, inching closer to him. She felt a little stupid when she told him that it was going to be ok, because he looked like he had already considered the possibility and dismissed it.

"My mom has cancer," he said again. He shook his head in disbelief, and then wiped a few lingering tears out of his eyes. "I just kept thinking about it last night, but to say it out loud, it's just," he stopped to try to prevent his voice from breaking again, but when he started to speak again, it was no use. "I can't believe it."

"I know," she murmured. She was trying hard to have faith, trying as hard as she could to believe that everything really was going to be ok, but it was harder when Derek wavered.

"What do I do?" he asked.

"What did your mom say?" she asked as she sat down next to him on the desk, sliding his two framed photos of her and Emily over to the side. She watched him while she spoke, but he stared straight ahead and didn't even look at her when she started to rub his back.

"I didn't talk to her. It was only Kathleen who called."

"Oh."

"She said that Mom was really strong about it," he continued. "She didn't want us to worry. Things like that."

"Who is her oncologist?" Meredith asked.

"Somebody named Eric Farrell," Derek shrugged in reply. "He's at Greenwich Hospital."

He watched her nod, and when she did so, she saw a glimmer of hope in his eye. "Do you know him?" he asked.

"No," she admitted, "But I'm sure he's great, Derek."

"Kathleen didn't know of him either," he sighed. "But she said she liked him."

"That's good."

They fell into silence for a moment or two, and she waited for him to speak again. The whole situation felt so familiar to her. She had been in Derek's position before—stunned and scared, but too needed to be either of those things for very long. She knew what must be going through his head, questions one after the other, each one tangling with the one before it. How long do I have before this makes her unrecognizable? What do I do when this is over? Will this ever be really over? Meredith didn't have any of these answers for him. All she could offer was the one thing she never had in her ordeal: a hand to hold.

"My mom has cancer," Derek finally said again, when she squeezed her fingers around his.

She turned towards him and wrapped both arms around him, pulling him into her embrace. He drew his arms around her waist and held on tighter than she had felt in a long time.

He had always wanted her, desired her, loved her, and in those ways, he always needed her. But never had she felt him need her like this before. She nuzzled her chin into the dip in his shoulder, laid her hands flat on his back, and he fell into her and let her bear his weight.

"I don't know what to do," he whispered almost shamefully.

"I know."

She kissed him gently before he could pull away completely. When he looked into her eyes, and never broke away, she noticed him nod ever so slightly. He straightened up a bit and she smiled reassuringly.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"Talk to the doctor, run every test," Meredith said confidently, finding it much easier to focus on the medical rather than the emotional. "We'll do the surgery, and then we'll see where we are," she finished. He nodded, and she added simply, "You just have to be there."

He nodded again, grateful for any instruction whatsoever, even if it was just how to put one foot in front of the other and leave this room.

"I'm here," she whispered, taking his hand and squeezing it. He pulled her back towards himself, hugged her, thanked her, and took a few minutes in her arms to steady his breath and figure out what came next.

"You need to get ready for your craniotomy," she said, his arms still wrapped around her, providing the answer for him before he figured out the question. "The Chief has you in OR 3 at nine."

"Ok," he agreed.

"I'm here, Derek," she whispered again. She unclenched her fingers from the seams of his scrubs, and slowly, he did the same.

"I know," he said, and Meredith smiled because those words held the first hint of confidence she'd heard in his voice all morning.

Later that evening, Meredith had brought Emily home alone while Derek stayed behind to monitor the first few hours of recovery of one of his patients that day. According to Brenda, Emily behaved normally throughout the day, and Meredith herself noticed nothing amiss during the drive home and in the hours afterward. It wasn't until the exhaustion of the previous sleepless night and the revelations of the day had long since set in, and Meredith and Emily both were just trying to make it until bedtime, that Emily voiced the observation she had made over the course of the day.

Meredith sat at one of the bar chairs at the kitchen counter, with her laptop open in front of her and folder upon folder stacked on either side, typing furiously between glances at the colorful two-pocket folders full of program information and the bland manila folders full of her academic and work records. Working on fellowship applications had become almost a nightly task over the past several weeks, and she felt that she was close to finished if she could just get in a few more good evenings' work.

Emily, who had started out playing with a doll she had named Sammy in the family room, had gradually migrated into the kitchen until she was practically at Meredith's feet. Meredith had been working almost silently all night, and Emily had been far too engrossed in her make-believe world to interrupt, until she paused and, looking up thoughtfully at Meredith, she said, "My daddy is so sad."

Meredith stopped typing, and the house fell silent for a second or two while she tried to think of how to respond. "Why do you think Daddy is sad?" she asked.

"Cause in the morning, him was crying right there in his eyes," Emily nodded, before adding confidently, "I saw it."

"Daddy is having a hard day," Meredith sighed, sure that he hadn't told Emily a thing about what was going on and disappointed that she had picked up on it anyway. "You know how sometimes, we're just sad?" she asked. "Daddy is just sad today."

"Oh," Emily sighed. "When is he gonna be home?"

Meredith glanced over at the clock on the oven. "Soon, I think, Em."

A few minutes elapsed, and Meredith was grateful that Emily didn't think of any more questions. Instead, she returned her attention to the doll in her arms, rocking her gently and then walking her across the linoleum floor. Meredith resumed typing and had just about finished the Vanderbilt application when Emily left abruptly, taking the doll with her. She came back not long after without the doll, holding a small plastic milk carton instead.

"Mommy, drink this," she demanded, thrusting the toy up at Meredith.

Meredith smiled and took a few pretend sips from the carton, making the appropriate lip-smacking noises. "It's delicious," she said appreciatively, and handed the carton back to Emily. "Where's Sammy?"

"Her is sleeping now cause it was bedtime. Hey, I got food too," Emily offered hopefully. "You want a hotdog or a tomato?"

"Uh, I think I'll have the hotdog," Meredith replied, and Emily ran back into the family room to fulfill the request. Meredith tried to resume typing while she waited on her food, but found herself distracted by the sounds of Emily rummaging through her container full of plastic food and opening and closing the various doors on her miniature kitchen set.

"Here, Mommy!" Emily cried, holding a small plastic hotdog fused to a vaguely realistic plastic bun.

"Thanks, Em!" Meredith took a few pretend bites, and rubbed her stomach appreciatively for good measure.

"I got a peanut butter and jelly too," Emily offered again, eager to keep the game going.

"Ok, I'll have one of those too," Meredith agreed.

"Ok," Emily replied excitedly, and dashed off to fulfill the request. She came back soon after, holding a sandwich small enough to fit comfortably in one of her hands. "My daddy likes this one the best," she told Meredith proudly, as if Derek's seal of approval was the highest anyone or anything could hope to attain.

"He does?" she asked, taking one bite and setting it down next to her computer.

"Yeah," Emily said, looking up at Meredith and asking again, "When's he gonna be home?"

Meredith looked over at the clock again, noting that barely ten minutes had passed since Emily had last asked the same question. "In a little bit," she answered again.

"When?" Emily asked, her voice slipping more and more into a whine as she drew out the word.

"As soon as he can, Em," she promised. It really should be any minute now, if his surgery had ended at the assumed time and the recovery went relatively smoothly.

"I can see him right now," Emily demanded. She reached up for Meredith to pick her up, and waited.

"You can't right now," Meredith said gently, watching Emily's expression crumble at the news. "But how about I let you stay up until he gets home?" she offered, for Derek's sake more than Emily's or her own. All three of them were exhausted, but if Derek could come home to Emily, the daughter who usually ran to him, exhilarated, when he walked in the door, that might help him to feel a little better.

"Soon?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, soon." Meredith turned to her computer, saved the document she was working on, and closed the lid. She could come back to the applications later, but for now, she stacked up the folders around her, and slid off her chair, hoisting Emily up onto her hip by her waiting arms.

Deadlines and the thought of a marathon shift the next morning pounded at the back of Meredith's head, feeling remarkably like a headache, while she bathed Emily and dressed her in her pajamas. Once back in the living room, Meredith looked almost longingly at the kitchen counter and the pile of paperwork. She just wanted it to be finished; she couldn't relax until every last application was sent out, and she still had three more to go.

"Mommy, you can play this game with me?" Emily asked, holding up the Chutes and Ladders game she had pulled from the bottom shelf on the bookcase in the family room.

Meredith hesitated, and caught herself before she sighed. Emily had usually been content to play alone, but as she got older, she was less and less satisfied with her toys and games unless Meredith or Derek was playing with her.

Meredith looked at her papers stacked next to her computer, and then at the clock. It was nearly eight. Where was Derek? They had gone through the entire day without seeing each other, though she had tried to find him at lunchtime and again in the afternoon when she got a spare minute to look. She paged him at the end of the day to let him know that she was leaving with Emily, but he hadn't had any time to talk. All day, she wondered how he was doing. She'd seen Mark late in the afternoon, but at the mention of Derek, he seemed none the wiser, and she didn't think it was her place to tell Mark what was going on if Derek hadn't already.

She looked at Emily, who was supposed to go to bed now, and then back at the clock. She could keep her awake a little longer. Derek should see someone happy, someone innocent, when he got home today. "Ok," Meredith agreed finally. "Let's get it ready and we can play until Daddy comes home."

Emily had just gotten this game not too long ago, and hadn't quite mastered the rules yet, but was always enthusiastic to play. After the first few attempts at a multi-player game, they realized quickly that the only thing Emily was not enthusiastic about was the competitive aspect of playing against someone else. Meredith's job as a fellow player would be, then, the job of a spectator and cheerleader. All Emily wanted her to do was to watch her spin the wheel, help her count the number of spaces she could move, and provide occasional commentary.

After a few spins, Emily landed on a spot that catapulted her up a third of the board. "A ladder!" Meredith exclaimed excitedly. "Ok, you can go all the way from this spot to this one," she instructed, tracing the path of a ladder from square 9 to square 31. Emily clapped and dragged her piece up to the new elevated place on the board. "Do you see why you got to move up?" Meredith asked. "That boy is working hard cutting that grass for his mom and dad, so then he got to go to the circus."

"Mommy, I'm winning this game," Emily reported happily.

"I know, you're doing good. Good job counting, Em."

It took them almost double that time to move half as far in the next moments. Emily spun low number after low number, trudging slowly across two rows of uneventful squares. Changing positions, Emily lay down on her back, with the spinner resting on her stomach, and rolled on her side each time she wanted to move her piece.

"Do you want to keep playing?" Meredith asked when she saw Emily yawn for the second time.

"Yes!" Emily cried indignantly.

"Ok, because if you're too tired, I can have Daddy wake you up when he comes home," she offered.

"I am playing!" she said stubbornly.

"Then let's spin again so you can move your piece," Meredith replied, glancing over at the clock again and wondering how much longer she could keep Emily awake.

Emily spun the wheel on her lap and showed it to Meredith. "What's that one?" she asked, pointing to the section where the arrow had stopped.

"You know that number, that's three."

Emily rolled to her side and gripped her piece in her hand, counting each square deliberately. Meredith cringed as the piece landed on a picture of a little boy skating on thin ice, with a red chute attached that took them almost back to the beginning of the board.

"I can go up again," Emily exclaimed in tired excitement, trying to find a path that her game piece could travel to ascend even higher.

"No, that one is a chute, so you have to go down a little bit," Meredith said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She watched the expression on Emily's face change as she tried to follow the path of the chute down. Meredith cringed; why couldn't she have thought to just let it go and let her quickly win the game?

"Why?" Emily demanded, her hand tightly wrapped around her piece, refusing to move it.

"Because see?" Meredith began, hoping at least that Emily would realize that she couldn't lose the game because no one else was playing, hoping that Emily might see that all it meant was that she was back at the beginning and was going to have to retrace her steps to get back where she had been. Meredith pointed to the square that Emily had landed on and tried to explain, to a tired little girl who was up past her bedtime, the idea of consequences. "This little boy is not being careful and is skating where he shouldn't be. That sign says 'No Skating.' So then he fell into the water when the ice cracked."

Emily sat up and crouched over the board, her palms flat on the cardboard as she examined the squares in question. "But I not do that," she said simply.

"I know, it's just part of the game," Meredith tried to assure her. "It just means that when you don't follow the rules, it could be dangerous."

"No!" Emily whined, dragging her piece back and forth across the board, but not moving to the square at the other end of the chute.

"Em, it's ok," Meredith said quietly, "It's only part of the game."

"I am not playing that way, Mommy," Emily said stubbornly, her voice growing louder.

"Well do you want to just stop playing for today?" Meredith asked. "We can put the game away and play it again tomorrow."

"No!" Emily shrieked when Meredith reached for the spinner and tried to begin to clean up. "Noooo," she screamed again, throwing her piece across the room and smacking her hands angrily on the open board before she tried to shove it across the room.

"Emily! Ok, I think it's time to put the game away," Meredith said. "Go pick up what you threw. Right now."

"No!" Emily wailed, fat angry tears rolling down her cheeks. "I keep playing."

"Em," Meredith said, trying to be serious without showing her frustration. "Go pick up your piece."

"No," Emily said defiantly while Meredith reached for the game board to fold it up and put it back in the box. "No, Mommy," Emily shrieked, winding up and smacking Meredith as hard as she could on the arm.

"Emily!" Meredith scolded. She left the board where it was on the floor, and picked Emily up and sat her on the couch. "Listen to me. You are not allowed to hit."

"But I wanna play my game," Emily cried loudly, hardly able to speak for crying so hard.

"No. No more game tonight. We can play it tomorrow, but right now, you need to go pick up the things that you threw and put them away."

Emily shook her head, and didn't move even an inch from where she was sitting. Meredith looked at her sternly, and pointed in the direction the game piece had flown. "Go," she said. With that, Emily slid off the couch and, crying the whole time, reluctantly went to the other side of the room to pick up her game piece, and then put it, along with the board, back in the box.

"I did it, Mommy," she cried.

"Thank you. Now what do you say to me because you hit me?"

"Sorry," Emily said in a long, whining, hiccupping breath.

"It's ok," Meredith sighed, pulling Emily onto her lap for a hug. "Em, you know our rules," she murmured, trying to quiet her down as she held her. "You can't hit and you can't throw things."

"But I wanna play my game," Emily sobbed, stuttering each word and coughing in the middle of her thought.

"I know, but it's time for bed now. We can play it tomorrow."

"No!" Emily whimpered, pushing herself away from Meredith's chest and starting to cry loudly again. "I am waiting for Daddy!"

"I don't know when Daddy's going to be home," Meredith sighed, knowing that if something had gone wrong with his patient's recovery, it could be several more hours or he might not be home at all. "He can wake you up when he gets home," Meredith promised. "It's time for bed."

"No, Mommy," Emily wailed angrily. "You said!"

Meredith sighed, and tried to compromise. "Five more minutes, but if Daddy's not home, then you are going to need to go to bed anyway."

She let a few minutes slip by, and five minutes came and went with Emily still whimpering quietly in Meredith's arms. Against her better judgment, she let a sixth go by, even though it was almost an hour past bedtime already. After seven minutes, Meredith told Emily that she was sorry, but it was really bedtime now. Emily shook her head, but a new round of exhausted screaming and crying didn't start until she shifted Emily's weight to her hip, got up, and headed for the stairs.

No sooner had they gotten up than the front door opened and Derek walked in. Meredith sighed and massaged her forehead for a second, keeping a tight grip on the squirming and crying girl in her arms.

"Hey," she said, taking note of the almost dazed expression on his face and hating that he came home to this after a day like today. Suddenly, she felt almost stupid for expecting that Emily's routine could be broken without problem and that this utopian scene of a delighted, happy child rushing into her father's arms at the end of the day would be possible so late after bedtime.

"Hey," Derek murmured, taking off his coat and leaving it on the chair by the door. "What's wrong? Why is she still awake?" he asked, coming into the living room.

"She wanted to wait for you, and I said ok because she thinks you're sad, and you are sad," Meredith sighed. She shifted a little, trying to keep Emily from wriggling out of her arms. Emily had barely looked at Derek since he walked in the door, and instead had buried her face in Meredith's shoulder, her cries only muffled by Meredith's clothes. "I thought she would make you feel better," Meredith tried to explain tiredly, "And now she's freaking out and it's loud and I'm sorry."

"It's ok," Derek murmured, looking exhausted but managing a small smile.

"Let me get her to bed, and then we can talk," Meredith promised. "I left you food in the fridge."

"I don't really want anything," he admitted, looking more and more tired with every minute he spent finally at home. She nodded, and tried to stop her eyes from filling with tears at the disappointment of making everything just a little bit worse. "I can put her to bed though," he offered.

"No, it's ok, I can do it," Meredith said quickly.

He shook his head. "I want to." Emily fell limply into his arms, exhausted and still crying a little. "Hi, Bean," Derek whispered in her ear, "Shhh."

"Daddy, I waited for you," Emily whimpered.

"I know, but now it's time to go to bed," he said softly. "Say goodnight to Mommy."

"I love you, Em," Meredith murmured. She kissed Emily's forehead, tucked her hair behind her ear, and kissed her one more time. "Goodnight."

"Night, Mommy," Emily yawned, finally starting to calm down.

"I love you," Meredith said again, this time for Derek, and she kissed him too. "I'm glad you're home."

Derek sighed, his eyes heavy with exhaustion. "Me too," he said, and she noticed his arms tighten a little around Emily.

He carried Emily upstairs, and Meredith waited in the living room for him to come down. She could hear Emily's voice, muffled but still tear-soaked, talking to Derek for the first few minutes, but soon, the house was quiet. She heard Emily's door click shut, and listened to Derek's footsteps as he walked down the hall, probably to change out of his work clothes.

Meredith put the game box back on the bottom shelf of the bookcase where it belonged, and went to the kitchen to push all of her things back to the corner of the counter to make room for breakfast the next morning. When she finished, she waited on the couch for a few more minutes, but Derek never came down.

She quickly peeked into Emily's darkened room before she found him in their bedroom, but he hadn't changed into sweats like she thought he would. Instead, she found Derek lying on the bed, still in the clothes he wore to work that morning, over twelve hours before. He hadn't even taken his shoes off. She looked closer, and saw that he wasn't asleep; he was simply staring at a point in front of him, not at anything in particular, hardly blinking at all. He wasn't crying, but Meredith would have almost preferred it if he was.

"Hey," she said gently. "Are you ok?" she asked, easing herself into bed with him. She lay on her side, facing him, and reached out to rub his arm. "Of course you're not ok."

"I'm tired," he whispered, sounding so much more so than he normally did after a long day at the hospital. "I can't believe how tired I am," he admitted in sad surprise.

"I know," Meredith replied.

He moved closer to her, wrapped his arms around her body, and buried his face in her neck. Their legs intertwined, and she held on to him as tightly as he was holding on to her. He kissed her neck a few times, moving his lips up as if he were planting a constellation along her neck that ended in a point just behind her ear. She rubbed his back and his arms, and he eventually moved to her lips while she let him take the lead. She let him touch her first, but when his hands never dipped lower and she didn't feel his body respond at all, she simply held him. She rubbed her bare foot along his ankle. He pressed his lips to her neck again but didn't kiss, and instead took a deep breath, trying to catch a whiff of her shampoo.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, both fully clothed and over the covers, not letting go. He started to shake a little, and she felt tears trickle onto her neck and down her back, but he stopped himself after a moment and didn't say anything about it, so she didn't either.

"I was thinking," she said after awhile, "That maybe you should go out there this weekend."

"I can't," he replied.

"You can, Derek," she said immediately, but stopped short of telling him why he had to. Go before this all starts. See her when she's still who she always was to you. Don't wait.

"You're on-call this weekend," he reminded her.

She froze momentarily, allowed herself a split second to panic. "You're right."

"I need to stay with Emily."

"I can get someone to cover for me," she assured him, trying to assure herself as well, hoping that they could find some way to let him go be where he needed to be. "Or I can see if Izzie can watch Em. Let me worry about that, ok?" she urged him, drawing as close as she could. "You should go see your family."

He didn't speak, but simply nodded, and when he finally pulled back to look her in the eyes, she saw a mixture of gratefulness and unspeakable fear. What it must be like, she thought, to lose so much faith in a day.

"This is real, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, filled with more empathy than she ever felt in her life. When it had been her in his shoes years before, she didn't grieve over the thought that the past would be lost, as it was not anything worth trying to hold on to. She had stood to lose the opportunity for a future. He had to worry about losing both.

"I don't know what to do," he said blankly.

Meredith took a breath, knowing that it took a lot for him to ask for help and everything for him to nearly beg for it. She was never the one with the experience in this relationship, and she hated that this was the only thing she could give him advice about.

"You're at the beginning," she began quietly, lacing her fingers through his and squeezing his hand. "I know it's scary," she said, pausing for a moment when he screwed his eyes shut. "I know you're afraid that you're going to make all the wrong decisions. But your sisters are here, and I'm here, and Emily's here. And your mom is still here, Derek," she whispered, trying her best to keep her voice from wavering as she talked to him. "She's here, and she's breathing, and she is alive. She's ready to fight," she finished confidently. Then, without letting go of his hand, she added, "So the first thing you can do is stop believing that she's already gone."


	18. I don't need boxes wrapped in strings

_I don't need boxes wrapped in strings  
And designer love and empty things  
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days  
_ _I need someplace simple where we could live  
_ _And something only you could give  
And that's faith and trust and peace while we're alive_

* * *

"Mommy, Santa can find me at Nana's house, right?"

Emily's question came innocent yet genuinely concerned from the backseat of their rental car, a practical sedan with four-wheel drive and snow tires, as they cruised down the Connecticut highway towards Derek's suburban childhood.

"Absolutely," Meredith assured her from the front seat. "Daddy and I told him that we're going to spend Christmas at Nana's this year, and he said ok, he would be sure to go there instead of our house."

"You're gonna get presents at Nana's too?" Emily asked.

"Yeah, everybody gets presents at Christmastime," she promised.

The car got quiet again for a little while, as Derek drove with such concentration a route that he didn't have to think about. Meredith looked out the window for a few miles, noting the pristine white snow that covered the unused fields and the dingy gray snow that piled up on the shoulder of the road. The car's clock indicated that it was 9:30, but to Emily, it still only felt like 6:30 and she was wide awake despite a long day of traveling.

The past several weeks had been intense ones in Seattle. Derek had spent a week in Connecticut at the end of November, including Thanksgiving, to be there while his mother underwent a mastectomy for a Stage IIA carcinoma. The news had been difficult to bear, especially when they had been prepared to figure out a treatment plan for a Stage I tumor. Though surgery had been considered successful and the recovery was progressing normally so far, Meredith knew that the first chemo treatment had taken place two weeks before, and all the side effects that came with it had set in. Since then, she was not entirely sure of the specifics, as Derek didn't voluntarily provide them and she wasn't sure if it was her right to ask.

Emily stayed with a few different people over the course of that week, with Izzie and Alex for two nights and even at Lexie's and Mark's for a night each. When Derek came home, he was functional, but very serious. He worked and operated as he was required to, but it seemed that it was a huge effort for him to summon any kind of playfulness or levity. She could hear him at night, typing furiously on his laptop and poring over old textbooks and journals. She tried to lure him back to bed in ways that he had always liked before, and she did all the things that normally left him so sated that he couldn't help but sleep, but nothing worked. She mentioned sleeping pills once, but after the look he gave her at the mere suggestion, she never brought it up again.

He seemed a little better the past few days. He put lights up on the house, decorated the Christmas tree, and went shopping with Meredith for the suitcase full of toys that was currently sitting in the trunk of the car, waiting for Emily to open on Christmas morning. But the quiet gravity returned when their plane took off for the East hours before, and Meredith kneaded the fabric of her jeans in worry over what to expect.

The trip to his childhood home would take 40 minutes from the airport, and now, with about fifteen minutes left, the intensity had returned in full force. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and sat up straight in his seat.

Meredith silently passed a juice cup and a book back to Emily, before turning to Derek. "Hey," she said. "Did I tell you that yesterday I had a guy fall off a ladder onto a couple strands of those big, chunky colored lights? Had to do a neuro check while they were picking shards of colored glass out of his back."

"Oh," Derek winced, keeping his eyes on the road in front of him. "Was he ok?"

"Concussion," Meredith supplied. "And a very Technicolor one at that. And he's on bed rest for his back through January. Most bizarre holiday-related injury?" she prodded when he didn't respond.

"Ah, you're forgetting I worked in Manhattan for years," he said, cracking a small smile. "I've seen my fair share." He stopped to think for a moment before continuing. "Ok, this isn't neuro, but when I was an intern, a guy came in to the ER from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with a shattered kneecap, he said as he flipped on his turn signal and quickly passed the car in front of him. "Kicked by a reindeer."

"Reindeers are not gonna come on the roof cause Nana said no," Emily interjected seriously, thumbing absentmindedly through her book like she had been waiting for an in to the conversation.

"No, they're allowed to come on the roof," Derek assured her right away. "Nana said it's ok."

"And then Santa is gonna come _woosh_ down the chimney in Nana's house," Emily said, her voice rising with every syllable. Meredith had never seen her so excited, anticipating Christmas in a new way now that she was finally old enough to understand its joys.

"Yeah, and he'll leave your presents for you to open when you wake up in the morning."

"Well, I can just open one if I wake up in the night," Emily said matter-of-factly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. Why shouldn't she have access to her presents when she wanted it?

"No, you have to stay in your bed," Derek said, glancing in his rearview for a second. "You can't open any presents until the morning. Those are the Christmas rules."

Emily sighed dramatically, but said nothing else for a little while. They exited the highway and soon found themselves deep in suburbia. Classic white colonials lined every street, some with footprints crisscrossed across their lawns and some covered with blankets of pristine white snow. Occasionally, a sloppy snowman sat square in the middle of a yard, but grooves made by sleds were more common. Meredith estimated that Christmas lights twinkled on at least half the houses, and menorahs glowed prominently in the windows of many others.

Derek drove on and on, never giving any indication of how much further his mother's house was but obviously very clear on how to get there. Meredith had been there before; she should have probably remembered a little bit about where it was in relation to the airport. But she was drawing a blank. She remembered more about what it felt like—busy and kind of loud and warm around the heart—than its geographical location.

"That snow is so cold," Emily offered, pointing out the window at a particularly vast stretch of land that Meredith realized a second later was part of a country club.

Derek glanced out the window at the property, still hosting a few teenagers sledding down the hill and over homemade snow ramps, and gave his first real smile since they boarded the plane. Meredith imagined for a moment a much younger Derek and a much younger Mark daring each other to do exactly what these kids were doing tonight. "Bean, we can go sledding tomorrow if you want."

"You bringed my special boots?"

"I did," Derek replied. "You'll be all set."

"You're allowed to sled on private property?" Meredith asked, amused.

"If you don't get caught," Derek smirked. "Don't tell me there were no country clubs in Boston for you to sneak on to."

"Yeah, well, I never got caught."

"Neither did I," he countered.

"Daddy, then Nana can make a snowman with us cause she's good at building," Emily interjected as they passed a family of snowmen on one particular lawn.

"Yeah, maybe," he replied, and Meredith noticed his energy was instantly gone with those few words.

"Em," she began to explain gently, "Nana has been feeling a little sick, so when you see her, she might be tired." She turned around and reached for Emily's knee, patting it in reassurance. "She might not be able to play as much because she needs to rest."

"Why?"

"Because she needs her energy," Meredith said patiently.

"We should play quiet games," Emily nodded. With two surgeons for parents, it wasn't the first time she had heard of someone needing their energy.

"Yeah, I think that would be a good idea," Meredith smiled. "Em, when you see Nana she is going to look a little bit different, ok? The doctor gave her some medicine to help her get better, and the medicine made her hair come out." She explained this slowly, wishing she could watch both Emily's face and Derek's face for signs of distress at the first vocalization of this particular piece of information.

Emily wrinkled her nose. "I got medicine before and I still got all my hairs. See?"

"I know, this is just Nana's special medicine that she needs," Meredith continued, still turned around in her seat to Emily while Derek kept driving. "Nana is still the same, she just doesn't have any hair."

"It'll come back when she doesn't have to take the medicine anymore," Derek added quietly.

"Yeah, it will," she promised.

"It's all gone?" Emily asked. She seemed slightly stunned at the prospect of seeing her grandmother, or anyone, that way.

"Yes, it's all gone," Meredith said gently, "But you don't have to be scared when you see her because she's still gonna be Nana. You can still hug her and kiss her."

"I can do that good," Emily nodded.

"I know you can."

They slipped back into silence—an exhausted, nervous kind of silence—while Derek worried about his mother and Meredith worried about Derek and how to get him through this. The first time they drove this road together, the situation was reversed. Meredith had stressed over pleasing Derek's family, who may or may not have still thought she was a slut (albeit no longer an intern), and Derek hoped desperately that his family would accept this gray-eyed girl whom he had taken to calling the love of his life.

"Em, what will it be like at Nana's house?" Meredith asked after a little while, just to see if Emily could remember what they had talked about.

"I should stay in my bed when Santa comes," she replied with such seriousness in her voice, almost immediately.

"Yes," Meredith smiled. "And what else?"

Emily cocked her head to the side and thought for a moment. "My Nana is sleepy and her's got no hair anymore."

"But what?" Meredith prodded, coaching her towards the important part for her sake, but for Derek's too.

"I don't know," Emily finally sighed after a little thought.

"But she's still Nana," Meredith reminded them all.

A few minutes later, they arrived in front of a two-story colonial home with white siding and navy shutters—a large but modest house, compared to many of the others they'd passed on the way here. Their car boxed a black Honda Civic, newish but not new, into the driveway. Hastily shoveled snow piled up on either side of the driveway, but a thin dusting still covered the car in front of them, and two inches sat on the basketball hoop with the ragged net. Multicolored Christmas lights twinkled on the shrubbery, and a single electric candle glowed in each window.

Derek led the way into the house. The foyer was well-lit but sparsely furnished, containing only a desk with no chair and several hooks on the wall by the door. Several Christmas cards stood on the desk, with pictures of children Meredith didn't know on display. Numerous framed photographs lined the walls on either side of the room. "Mom?" he called.

"Oh, Derek, you're here!" Mary's voice came from somewhere within the house. "Hold on, I'm in the living room!"

"No, don't get up, don't get up," he said hastily, leading Meredith and Emily through the foyer and into the house. Emily looked around, eyes darting from one side to another and mouth open in curiosity.

The living room was situated at the right end of the foyer and steps from the kitchen. A real Christmas tree stood in the corner of the room, decorated with ornaments and lights and fallen needles on the carpeted floor, and a nativity scene was set up on top of the cabinet that housed the television. A plush leather sectional sofa wrapped around the room, pointed at the television but also not far from the wood-burning stove in the other corner.

Meredith had to forcibly stop her breath from hitching at the sight of Mary. She felt like one of them had to, and Derek and Emily couldn't. As a doctor, the changes she saw in Mary weren't abnormal, just unnerving. Her hair was definitely gone, and she wrapped her head with a light blue silk scarf. She wasn't gaunt, but she had gotten thinner, and maybe a little paler too, though to be fair, the light in the room wasn't very good.

"Hi, Derek," she smiled tenderly, making no indication of any of these changes as she eased herself off the couch and pulled Derek into a hug.

"Hi, Mom," he said somewhat stiltedly, and took a deep, shaky breath that no one made mention of. Meredith stood by his side, waiting to follow his lead, and closed her fingers around Emily's when she felt her reach for them.

"How was your flight?" Mary asked after a barely discernible moment of unease. Meredith had spent most of her life thinking that she was the only one who felt moments like this, moments of such discomfort and awkwardness and fear in social situations, but she was sure Derek was feeling this one too.

"Good," he nodded, and shifted his weight from foot to foot while he fixated on her head and everything about her appearance, as if he could tell her well-being just by looking.

"Well that's good," Mary murmured, "I'm glad you're here. Is this my sweet Emily?" she asked, squatting down in front of the little girl.

Emily leaned heavily into Meredith, letting her bear most of her weight as she turned and hid her face against Meredith's thigh. Mary looked up helplessly at Derek, but he didn't move. "It's ok," Meredith finally said quietly, and got down to look Emily in the eyes. "She's still the same Nana, remember?" Emily paused for a moment, but then nodded and curled into Meredith's arms for reassurance. From her mother's embrace, she looked at her grandmother again, studying the changes intensely. "Can you give her a hug?" Meredith asked.

Emily wrapped her arms gingerly around Mary's neck, and Mary squeezed her tightly. "Hi, sweetie," she said in a soft, gentle voice. "I'm so glad to see you." She pulled back and saw that Emily couldn't help but stare at her head with such concern in her eyes. Mary touched her own head with her fingertips and rubbed but never took the scarf off. "See?" she smiled reassuringly, "It's ok, it doesn't hurt."

Meredith couldn't help but disagree. One look at Derek and she could tell that it hurt very much.

Emily reached out hesitantly, stretching her fingers towards Mary's head. Mary kept smiling. "It's ok," she repeated as five small fingertips touched the silky fabric for a moment and then pulled away. Derek jumped a little when Meredith put her hand on the small of his back.

"The house looks good, Mom," Derek said, following Mary back into the living room.

"Thank you, Kevin and Annie did most of it last week," she replied. "School let out on the 19th for her and the kids."

Derek sat down at one corner of the sofa, and Emily climbed up with him. Mary sat down at the middle corner, and Meredith situated herself between them. "How's the baby?" he asked, referring to Anne's youngest child, a surprise boy who arrived about a year ago, six years after Audrey, her third daughter. He was the only one of the Shepherd grandchildren who was younger than Emily.

"Walking," Mary smiled proudly. "Trying to, anyway. The girls all treat him like he's one of their dolls, I think he's finally trying to take advantage of his ability to run away."

"I'll have to have a talk with him," Derek said, smiling a little. "Make sure he gets enough time to spend with Maggie's boys."

"Emily, you'll get to see baby Ian tomorrow," Mary said. "And all your cousins. Morgan and Audrey are just a little bit older than you are. Do you remember?"

Emily shook her head, still quiet. "You'll have lots of kids to play with, Bean," Derek assured her. Meredith silently agreed; between Kathleen's five, Nancy's three, Maggie's three, and Anne's four, there would be plenty of people here to fuss over Emily and keep her quite busy. The first time she met all of Derek's family, she'd been so overwhelmed by the noise and the chaos that seemed to just happen with so many people under one roof. Derek had taken it all in stride; she hoped that having his family together again would have the same effect on him now.

"Maggie will be here around eleven, and we'll start cooking when everybody else gets here," Mary told them. "And Mass is at eight."

"Ok," Derek nodded. Derek hadn't been a practicing Catholic at least since Meredith had known him, but between he and Mary now, it wasn't a question of whether he was going to church or not. Meredith stayed quiet, glancing back and forth from Derek to his mother. Derek seemed to be a little more relaxed now, but when Mary yawned and shifted in her seat, he was immediately on edge again. "Are you ok?"

"Just a little tired," Mary said casually. "Nothing to worry about."

"Nana?" Emily interrupted hesitantly, speaking for the first time since they set foot in the house. "Your medicine is why you don't got any hair anymore."

"Yes, you're right," Mary nodded. "It'll come back when I get better though."

"Is your doctor working with you on managing the side effects?" Derek asked hurriedly. Meredith's heart sank as Derek slipped back into obsessing. "There are some really powerful anti-nausea drugs out there now. He has given you one, right?"

"He has. I'm feeling pretty good, Derek," Mary assured him. "Better, now that all my kids are home for Christmas."

"And your surgical scars are healing? The first chemo treatment was two weeks ago, right? So you go back next week?" he fired off his questions quickly, one after the other without really giving her time to answer.

"Yes, next week," Mary replied patiently. "December 29. I didn't want to do it while you were here."

"Everybody is coming tomorrow?" Meredith asked, feeling just a bit like she was interrupting, or at the very least in the middle.

Mary nodded. "And on Christmas as well, except Nancy and Maggie won't be back until dinner. They'll be spending the day with their in-laws," she explained.

"Is anyone sick?" Derek asked. "If anyone's sick, they should probably stay at home."

"Nobody is sick and nobody is staying at home." Mary was gentle but firm. "Everyone will be here tomorrow."

"Ok, it's just that it's cold and flu season and you're vulnerable to infection because of the chemo, and if you get sick, they might not be able to stay on schedule with the treatments, and it's really important that they do," Derek rambled, unable to hide the worry in his voice. "Chemo is your best option after surgery."

One part of Meredith wanted to tell Derek that he needed to calm down. The doctor part of her could step back and see that everything seemed normal so far. The treatment had definitely taken its physical toll on her, but unfortunately, that's how these medicines worked. The doctor part of her could see that, but the part of her that was Derek's wife couldn't bring herself to tell him so. The part of her that was Derek's wife just broke for her husband.

"Nobody's sick, Derek," Mary assured him calmly. "I want everybody here; the doctor has everything on a schedule."

"It's just that with an early stage II, it's—"

"Derek, it's ok," she said, cutting him off. "It really is. Now, we made up Anne and Maggie's room for Emily and your room for you and Meredith if you want to take the bags up there. That is something you can do for me."

"I'll just be a minute," he said quietly. He lifted Emily off his lap and headed back towards the front door, seemingly grateful to have something to do, to at least be able to do something.

"Are you sure you're feeling all right?" Meredith asked when she saw Mary yawn again. "Don't feel like you have to stay up just for us."

"I'm fine, Meredith," Mary replied kindly, but firmly, before changing the subject entirely. "Emily, are you excited for Santa to come tomorrow night?" she asked.

Emily's eyes widened at the mention of what was to come, and nodded fervently. "Nana, he's gonna come down the chimney."

"Yes, he is. I made sure I left it all clear for him, see?" She pointed to the wood-burning stove, and the five stockings hanging on the wall between the stove and the tree.

"Your tree is pretty," Emily said.

"Your aunts helped me with it. We put all the lights and ornaments on it a few days ago because I wanted to make sure it was ready for you. Do you have a tree at home?"

"Yeah, and I got lights on my house too," Emily added proudly.

"Colored ones like mine?"

"No, they are white all the way around," Emily said. Meredith smiled, picturing their house tucked away in the clearing overlooking the city. Derek came home from the hospital a few nights before with two shopping bags full of white lights, and outlined the entire house in them the next morning. Meredith thought he was crazy, but she wasn't about to fight him on it. When she came home that night though, she had to admit that it made her inexpressibly happy to see their home framed in white light.

"The house looks great," Meredith supplied, filling the silence as soon as the conversation started to lull.

"Anne came over the other day with the kids and did it," Mary said, motioning around the living room to indicate all that her youngest daughter had done. "Everybody's out of school now, so she just came during the day. She wanted it to look nice for when I got home. Kevin came and did the lights on Saturday."

"They look really nice," Meredith supplied. Emily crawled across the couch and into Meredith's lap.

"Oh God, you three must be exhausted," Mary said in a fluster, like she'd forgotten herself. "Can I get you anything to drink? Or eat? Anything?"

"I'm ok," Meredith assured her. "Emily, are you hungry? Do you want a snack?"

"I made sure we had some special treats since I knew you were coming," Mary offered, trying to entice Emily to eat.

"Em, let's go see what Nana got for you. No, no, sit," Meredith said when Mary started to get up. "I can set her up with a paper towel on the coffee table if that's ok. Don't feel like you have to get up. Do you need anything?" she asked.

"It's ok, Meredith, I can walk. Can she have cookies?" Mary asked.

"Yeah, she can," Meredith replied to Emily's delight. "I'm just going to go see if Derek needs any help. You're sure you're ok?" asked cautiously, phrasing the question to both Emily and Mary.

"Just fine," Mary promised.

Mary led Emily into the kitchen, while Meredith went upstairs in search of Derek. She'd been to this house before, but she couldn't remember which room belonged to whom. As she walked down the hallway, it seemed like every wall in Mary's house was covered in pictures. She wanted to find Derek, but couldn't help but move slowly down the hall, looking at each of dozens of framed photographs. Some were more recent, showing groups of her more than a dozen grandchildren, pretty girls and handsome boys who looked a bit like Derek used to. Others showed five brunette children, professional portraits from the seventies and eighties and candids of birthdays, holidays, and graduations. She paused a little longer to look at one picture in particular: a young, vibrant Jack Shepherd stood in the backyard just paces away from the hallway where she stood now. Autumn leaves surrounded him and he held a small boy, no more than four or five years old, upside down in his arms. Meredith touched the picture with a fingertip, tracing Derek's delighted open-mouthed smile, before continuing on down the hallway.

"Derek?" she murmured quietly, peeking in the door at the far end of the hallway. Though the room was still decorated with Yankees memorabilia and various trophies and pictures, the old furniture had been removed and replaced by only a queen-sized bed and two night tables. Derek sat on the bed in the small room, the suitcases piled unopened on the floor. "Hey," Meredith whispered, taking a seat next to him.

"Hey," he sighed, and looked up at her. "I'm sorry. I just needed a minute." Meredith nodded sympathetically. In some ways, Meredith realized, it had been easier for her to break down when she was alone. Though she had no one to depend on, she didn't have to worry about taking care of herself because she didn't have to take care of anyone else. She started to see the only upside in this, the network of love and support, as a sort of added burden, an expectation that Derek had to stand up when he felt like he was falling. "She looks like a cancer patient," he said finally.

"I know," she said. "But she's not acting like one. She just wants you to be ok," Meredith pleaded.

"Have you ever been in my room before?" Derek asked, looking around at all of his childhood things on the walls and the shelves.

"Yeah, I have."

"It's just weird being back here," he said, and she nodded again. He had spent so much time forging his own life, learning how to be an adult. She knew how terrifying, how exhausting, it was to suddenly be so needed as the child and as an adult at the same time.

"I know," she said earnestly, resting her head on his shoulder and looping her arm around his waist.

"I hate that you do," he whispered, pressing his lips to her forehead.

"I hate that you're finding out," she replied, and gripped his hand in hers, their fingers intertwining. They sat there in silence for a moment, faintly hearing Emily and Mary talking in the kitchen downstairs, before she sat up a little straighter. "Your sisters will be here tomorrow," she whispered. "You love this time of year. We can still make a good Christmas," she said, trying so hard to promise him. "Let's just try, Derek."

The following afternoon started when Anne arrived after lunch with a baby boy on her hip and three little girls following closely behind, and announced that there was no pie left in the state of Connecticut.

"I'm telling you, we looked everywhere," she told her three frustrated sisters and an uncomfortable Meredith in the kitchen. "Two supermarkets, a farmer's market, nothing."

"There were no pies in any one of those stores?" Nancy asked incredulously. She sat with Maggie and Kathleen on either side of her, and Meredith across from her at the kitchen table. They had been there for about an hour, preparing food for dinner that night. Well, Derek's sisters were cooking. Meredith was cutting vegetables and peeling potatoes and basically preparing only what she could not ruin. "That's what you're honestly telling me?"

"Do you like blueberry?" Anne shot back, shifting the baby on her hip and pushing her shoulder-length curly brown hair off her face. "How about lemon meringue? Well that's all that was left at the supermarket, and the farmer's market said they would have more ready soon if I wanted to wait."

"Why didn't you wait?" Nancy asked as Meredith shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

"Because I had four kids and a husband in the car," Anne replied. Her husband Kevin and her three girls stood beside her, waiting for this to blow over so they could leave.

"So there's no pie," Maggie concluded bluntly as Mary walked in, kissing the three girls and Kevin before hugging and kissing Anne and the baby.

"Not at this moment, no," Anne sighed.

"We don't have to have pie though, do we?" Meredith offered timidly. "It should be ok, we'll have cookies."

"No, we have to have pie," Nancy said. "Mom always makes sure we have pumpkin and apple for Thanksgiving and Christmas."

"Girls, it's no big deal," Mary assured them. "We can certainly make do without pie this year."

"No, Mom, I'm going back out later to get some," Anne said apologetically. "We'll definitely have it. I was just saying that we didn't have any right now."

"Annie, it's all right," Mary said, smiling when the baby smiled at her. "We don't need it."

"No, we do," she said anxiously. "We always have it."

"Mom, chill," Anne's oldest daughter, a girl of twelve named Lauren, said. "Is everyone here?" she asked her aunts, pushing her hair back in much the same way as her mother.

"The girls are all in the den," Kathleen said. "Kev, the boys are outside playing football."

"I think I'll go with you, girls," Mary said. "So tell me about your play at school," she asked all three of them as they walked back into the living room together.

"I'm gonna go out and see what they're doing," Kevin said, motioning to the backyard. "I'll go out and find the pies and whatever else you need in a little bit," he told Anne gently, like he knew that it wasn't about the pies at all. "Just let me know, ok?" he murmured, and she nodded gratefully.

"Is Emily with the girls?" Anne asked, taking the seat next to Meredith at the table. Tall like Derek, she crossed her long legs and smoothed her sweater down.

"Yeah, I can bring her over if you want," Meredith offered.

"No, it's ok, they'll all be coming up when the cookies are done anyway."

"He's gotten so big," Meredith marveled at the happy blonde boy with the toothy smile in Anne's arms.

"He'll be a year old in January," she said carefully, tensing up. Meredith nodded, swallowed hard at the thought of another January baby that never was, and when she smiled at her nephew anyway, Anne relaxed. "It's his first Christmas, isn't it, little man?" Anne cooed, kissing the top of his head as he looked up at her, reaching for her face.

"Remind me, I have two boxes of clothes in my trunk for him," Maggie interjected. "I've got some 12 months, but mostly 18 months and 2Ts."

"Oh, ok, thanks."

"Wine, anybody?" Kathleen asked, having gotten up from the table and brought over a bottle and several glasses. Nobody refused.

A little while later, Derek came blustering into the kitchen, snow caked onto the hem of his jeans. He looked at Meredith, a quick glance her way that was barely noticeable to anyone else, to see if she was ok. Like she still didn't do families, and he was still able to step outside his own pain to realize that his family in particular was intense even on their best day. She nodded, gave him a small, reassuring smile, and he mirrored the gesture.

"Hey," he addressed the whole group, and went to get a glass of water. "Hi, Annie," he said, giving her a one-armed hug when she stood up.

"Hey, Der."

"Hey, buddy," Derek lifted Ian out of Anne's arms. "How are you? How come you're not out playing football with us?"

"Say, 'Uncle Derek, it's because I'm still working on walking unassisted," Annie replied. "Maybe next year.'"

The baby squealed with laughter when Derek hoisted him up and blew a raspberry on his stomach. He went to stand by Meredith, placing a hand on her shoulder, and she turned a bit, her hand on the back of his leg. "Emily's in the living room?" She nodded.

"Who's winning?" Kathleen asked.

"Uh, Jerry's team," Derek said, trying to pretend he didn't care at all, defensive when a smug grin crept across Kathleen's face. "But, you know, it's competitive. We'll be back in the game soon."

"Yeah, sure you will," Kathleen taunted. Meredith had to admit she was probably right. Though she wasn't sure which kids got distributed to which adult's team, Jerry had a good thirty pounds on Derek, and she could have sworn she remembered them talking a long time ago about his days as a running back at Yale.

"Derek, Mark didn't come home for Christmas this year?" Maggie asked.

"He's spending Christmas with his girlfriend," Derek explained. Mark had been seeing someone for about eight months, a speech pathologist he met at Joe's who wouldn't sleep with him on the first date. Meredith suspected it was his longest relationship ever; she was a little shocked that it had lasted this long, even more so that he was spending a holiday with her, when he usually either worked through Christmas or came back here to Derek's family. "And he said he just wanted to give us some time as a family," Derek added. "He said he didn't want to intrude."

"Funny," Maggie shot back playfully. "He never seemed to mind intruding on our sleepover parties growing up."

"Yeah, well, he's evolving."

"Oh, you know what, Derek?" Nancy interrupted, as if the mere mention of Mark had jogged her memory of a life Derek once had that Meredith knew nothing about. "Addie sent me some pictures of the baby; I have one on my cell."

She rummaged through the black Prada bag on the kitchen counter and pulled out a Blackberry that she passed across the table to Derek. He held it low enough so that Meredith could see too. The picture showed a very happy Addison, grinning as she held a chubby baby boy who looked to be about eight or nine months old. An equally happy man stood on the other side of the child, someone Meredith didn't recognize but she assumed his name was the same as the one on the wedding invitation they received two years ago. The child had dark skin and a shock of black hair, and resembled neither one of them, but had a two-toothed smile that somehow looked a lot like Addison's.

"Very cute," Derek said with sincerity. He put the picture down on the table, and squeezed Meredith's shoulder as if to let her know that he had always loved her best. "We'll have to send her something."

"We sent flowers from all of us," Nancy assured him.

"Ok, well we'll send her something," he motioned between himself and Meredith. He took another glance at the picture, and murmured, "Good for her."

His sisters all looked up at him expectantly, and Meredith couldn't help but do the same, though she wasn't sure what she, or any of them, wanted him to say or do. Derek recoiled just barely, and passed the baby back to his sister. He looked at the back door and then at Meredith. "I'll be back in a little bit," he half-asked, half-told her. He looked relieved when she nodded, grateful that she was letting him escape this part of it all.

The cooking kept going late into the afternoon; every kitchen surface seemed to be covered, and Meredith felt like the stirring and chopping and baking had been going on forever. Though she had improved this particular skill set over the past few years, she still rarely felt more useless than she did in the kitchen. Today, she was more than happy to take orders from any one of Derek's sisters, terrified after the pie incident that she might irreversibly screw something up and ruin Christmas.

"Meredith, you haven't started your fellowship yet, have you?" Maggie asked as she chopped celery and onions and Meredith cut bread into pieces for stuffing. Anne had gone upstairs to put the baby down for his nap, and Nancy and Kathleen were busy at the stove; Meredith had lost track of who was making what anymore.

"No," she replied. "Another year and a half of residency."

After the initial meeting with Nancy, Meredith had gotten friendlier with Derek's sisters as the years went by. She didn't see them often, and called only intermittently, but once they stopped viewing her as Derek's midlife crisis, their relationships were more than she had ever expected.

Out of the four of them, Meredith liked Maggie best. It wasn't that the other three weren't pleasant, but she had always been a little uneasy with Kathleen (maybe it was the shrink thing), and she had never fully gotten over her stressful introduction to Derek's family by way of Nancy's Seattle visit. Derek's oldest two sisters came off as intense; his youngest was always nice, but she had very little in common with Anne. Maggie, a sharpshooting Wall Street exec, reminded her a bit of Cristina, and in that way, her own particular brand of Shepherd intensity was easier to handle.

"What kinds of fellowships are you applying for?" Maggie asked with genuine interest.

"Mostly spinal surgery or neuro-oncology. Two in peds."

"All of them in Seattle?" she asked, dumping piles of vegetables into a bowl.

"Um, no, actually," Meredith replied hesitantly. She and Derek had barely discussed a potential cross-country move; she hadn't been prepared to talk about it to anyone yet, let alone to his family. "Some are in Seattle, but there's one in Boston, Nashville, New York, Chicago and, uh," she paused, trying to remember the last application. All of them had been mailed out at least three weeks ago. "Baltimore," she finished. "Johns Hopkins."

"Cream of the crop," Maggie nodded approvingly. "We didn't realize you were looking on the East Coast."

"Looking. Applying," Meredith shrugged, wanting desperately to change the subject. "I have to get an offer first. We'll see."

"It's coming up quickly."

"Yeah," Meredith replied. Don't think about it now, don't think about it now, don't think about it now. "Yeah, it is."

"Maggie, when's the last time you basted?" Kathleen interrupted, opening the oven door an inch or two. "The turkey is going to get all dry."

"It's been like 20 minutes, Kathleen. I got it," Maggie said huffily, but she got up to tend to the meat. Meredith hoped for Maggie's sake that no one would ruin the turkey, much less anything else. Any other occasion, they probably could have laughed about it, but nobody was in a laughing mood about anything today.

"How's Jeremy with the new girlfriend?" Nancy asked Kathleen.

"Eh," she shrugged, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I don't care for her, but he seems happy." She glanced out the small window above the sink at the driveway. "He was visiting her but he should be back by now." She went to the back door and called out to everyone playing football in the snow, "Is Jeremy out there?"

"No," someone called back. "He's not back yet."

"He's at his girlfriend's house," someone else, probably one of Jeremy's two younger brothers, said in a high-pitched teasing voice, followed by a chorus of 'oooohs.'

"Mom, are the cookies ready yet?" another boy yelled back to Kathleen.

"Not yet," she replied. Glancing down at her watch, she sighed in exasperation. "Send Jeremy in here when he gets here."

About fifteen minutes later, still no sign of Jeremy, Paul, Maggie's husband, came into the kitchen with their son Will, who was only about a year older than Emily. "Hey," Paul said, flashing a smile as he adjusted his Boston University knit hat, pulled tight over his shorn head. "Potty break," he explained, herding Will past the crowded kitchen, but stopping in front of a cooling rack piled high with chocolate chip cookies. "Oh, the cookies are done?" he asked innocently, reaching for one.

"Paul, they're for later," Maggie said immediately, practically ready to jump up and take the cookie right out of his hand.

"Come on," he grinned, cupping Will's face in both hands. "How can you resist this face?"

"No," Maggie said anxiously, too anxiously for Maggie. "We have to have enough for later. We can't run out."

Soon after Paul had come and gone with Will, there wasn't much left to do except sit and wait for things to finish cooking, and occasionally check on something in the oven or stir something on the stove. Meredith was more than ready to relax, proud of herself for weathering cooking and conversation with the Shepherd girls for several hours, but as soon as the last dish was in the oven, Anne rummaged through her bag and pulled out a fat, weathered day planner.

"So I'm going to take her on the 29th, and then stay with her for a few days," she said, flipping through the pages of her schedule. Before Meredith even realized what was happening, the other three pulled out their own Blackberries or organizers, and sat down at the kitchen table together to negotiate the chemo schedule. "The kids don't go back until the second though, and Lauren can watch everybody for a day while Kev is at work," Anne continued, clicking her tongue as she tried to figure something out. "But I don't want to leave them all alone _that_ long."

"Can you drop them at my house on the way to the hospital?" Kathleen asked.

"You'll be home?" she asked.

"I have three patients in the morning. I can get home for lunch," Kathleen explained. "Between the eight of them, they can all make sure Ian is ok."

As Anne nodded her approval and wrote in the plan, Maggie chimed in. "I've got the food and the cleaning taken care of this week," she said. "Just call me when she's sleeping, she won't even know I was here."

"I've got four patients due next week, but I'll stay at night with you, Anne, and hope I don't have to run over to the hospital," Nancy murmured, scrolling furiously through her Blackberry. "But I should be able to cover the January 16th treatment," she said, looking up. Turning to Anne, she asked, "And you have the kids, since it's Martin Luther King day?" Anne nodded. "Kathleen, can you cook that week? Mag, you're on-call," Nancy finished, and they all nodded. Meredith sat there silently, amazed at their efficiency.

"When's the next one?" Maggie asked when she finished typing what they had just agreed to into her Blackberry.

"The doctor wants to do it every three weeks, so that'd put us at the week of February 6," Kathleen said.

"Ok, I'll free up my schedule for that week," Maggie replied. "I have some accrued vacation days."

"Does she want to go shopping for a wig?" Nancy asked.

"Why wouldn't she?" Anne shot back like it was a given that she, of course, would. Privately, Meredith thought that hair loss appeared to be the least of Mary Shepherd's concerns.

"I'm just gonna, uh," Meredith stammered, making what seemed like an inordinate amount of noise as she got up from her chair and started for the living room. Suddenly, she didn't just feel out of place in this kitchen; she felt like she was intruding on something extremely personal as the four of them tried to figure out the logistics of their mother's cancer. "I'm just gonna check on everyone," she explained hastily. "I'll be right back."

The living room was starting to dim as the sun sank lower in the sky. Curled up on the sectional sofa and sprawled out on the floor were all nine of Derek's nieces, plus Emily and Mary. Bowls of popcorn sat half full at various points around the room, and a movie, _Miracle on 34_ _th_ _Street_ , played on the television. She looked for Emily first, and found her curled up next to Nancy's fifteen-year-old daughter Lizzy, sharing the same blanket. Mary sat on the adjoining section of the sofa, with Morgan and Audrey on either side of her, resting their heads comfortably on her shoulders.

"Everything ok?" Meredith asked quietly, not wanting to interrupt the movie or the scene in front of her.

Mary looked up at Meredith with a start, and then smiled tiredly. "Everything is great," she murmured.

By some miracle, all the food was finished and not ruined by the time they were ready to serve dinner at 6:00. Kevin had even managed to find six pies earlier that afternoon for them to eat after church. The boys had all come in from outside, and everyone was more than ready to eat. Meredith helped Derek's sisters carry steaming platters of food to the dining room to set up a massive buffet.

"Girls, what can I do?" Mary asked, coming into the kitchen.

"Nothing," Nancy assured her. "Mom, you just sit tight. We got it."

"Come on, we've got 27 people who need to eat," Mary replied. "Let me do something. I'm _fine_ ," she said, but Kathleen swooped in and picked up the dish she was reaching for before Mary could get to it.

"Mom, let us do this for you," she said quietly, wrapping one arm around her mother for a quick hug before proceeding into the dining room. "Please."

After Mass and dessert, that evening, it was becoming obvious that adrenaline and sugar were the only things keeping Emily going, and Meredith and Derek too for that matter. Meredith stood with Derek in the kitchen while he talked to Kevin and Kathleen's husband Jerry about the Yankees' offseason deals. Meredith was so exhausted that she could barely even pretend to listen, and she noticed that Derek wasn't speaking with anywhere near as much gusto as he usually did when someone brought up baseball. Instead, he let Jerry take the lead, and he simply nodded most of the time, and only occasionally added a comment or two of his own.

"Hey," Nancy interrupted, tapping Derek on the shoulder. "We need a break," she murmured. "We're going to go out for a drink. Do you want to come?"

Derek looked at Meredith longingly, but almost guiltily. He had tried so hard to escape all day, had gone through the motions of dinner and a vigil Mass, and now, at the end of the day, he just looked done. Nancy had the same weathered look on her face that he did. I know I left you with them all day, his eyes seemed to tell Meredith, but please, please let me stay away from this a little longer. Meredith nodded just barely, and he did the same to Nancy.

"We were thinking of going to Slattery's," she said.

"Yeah," Derek murmured, "That sounds good."

"Can we take your car?" Nancy asked. "Everybody is getting ready to go home, and the guys need our cars to take the kids."

Derek shrugged and nodded. "You'll be ok to stay here?" he asked Meredith quietly, his hand lingering on her hip for just a moment. "It'll just be for a little while," he promised.

"We'll be ok," Meredith assured him. Everyone was either leaving or probably getting ready for bed within the next half hour or so anyway, she figured. She could be alone for a little while. She could do that for him, if that's what he needed to get through this holiday.

"Now?" Derek asked Nancy, and she nodded.

"Mom?" Nancy called across the room as she pulled on her coat. "We have to go for a little bit," she said, motioning to her sisters and brother. "The guys are going to take the kids home soon. Is that ok?"

"Putting the finishing touches on my gifts?" Mary asked playfully. Cheerful, a month after a mastectomy. Meredith could certainly stand up and do whatever Derek needed her to do.

"That's exactly it," Derek replied, with a smile that Meredith knew instantly was forced if not faked.

"Mom, where are you going?" Rachel, Nancy's middle daughter, asked.

"We just have to run an errand," Nancy assured her.

"Can I come?" Rachel asked.

Nancy smiled, but shook her head. "Dad's gonna take you guys home in a little bit. Tell your sisters, ok?"

"I won't be too long," Derek promised Meredith. He found Emily and kissed her goodnight before he left.

A few hours later, Emily had just gone to bed and Derek still wasn't home. Meredith took a deep breath as she returned to the living room. Though she'd been married to Derek for nearly four years, she wasn't sure if she'd ever been entirely alone with his mother. Derek had always been at least in the building, but now he had asked to get away, and she felt like she could at least allow him that. She could understand the need for denial coupled with the need for a stiff drink. Of course, it would mean that she had to do the supportive thing, but her brand of supportive wasn't exactly the same as what seemed to be not only Derek's, but the entire Shepherd family's, idea of the word. In any case, she could try to talk to Mary while her children were out trying to escape Christmas or dying, or probably both.

After seeing the way his sisters behaved today, and how all five of them chose to cope, Meredith couldn't help but feel achy inside when she thought about what it must have been like in this house when Derek's father died. Here were all five of them trying to wrest control of an uncontrollable situation, trying desperately to make sure that it did not happen again.

Meredith came back downstairs with the suitcase filled with presents, leaving it on the floor behind the couch. She pulled her long sleeves down a bit over her knuckles and crossed her arms in front of her as she took a seat. Mary sat curled up on the couch, watching CNN, but she turned the volume almost all the way down when she saw Meredith return. She wore a thick woolen cardigan over her t-shirt, and a large knitted blanket covered her lower half. Meredith had a hard time deciding whether or not she looked frail in the low light.

The wood-burning stove crackled as a log collapsed within it, glowing faintly in the corner of the room. A few small stacks of presents piled up under the tree, though pretty much everyone but the four of them would open most of their gifts at their own homes.

"I don't think she's ever gotten in bed that easily," Meredith said, not sure how to fill this space. They had two things in common, Derek and Emily, so she figured one of them wasn't a bad place to start.

"The promise of Santa is a powerful thing," Mary replied knowingly. "Nothing will get them in bed faster. Actually sleeping though, that's another thing."

"She's exhausted, but fighting it. We'll see how early she wakes up."

"If she's anything like her father, you've got until 6:00," Mary chuckled.

"She's lucky we're used to early mornings. Do you need anything?" Meredith asked. "Can I get you something to drink, or eat, or…something?"

Mary shook her head. "I'm fine," she said. "Derek's not home yet?"

"Not yet."

They fell into a silence for a moment or two. Meredith felt Mary's eyes on her as she read the news marquee at the bottom of the television screen. She wished that Mary would turn the volume up again. Did she not realize that this was awkward? Did she not think it _was_ awkward? Meredith was scrolling through topics in her mind for an appropriate conversation starter or rejuvenator when Mary spoke without prompting.

"Meredith, can we talk?" she asked.

"Yeah," she said, very surprised. "Of course."

"I'm just wondering—and if I'm prying, please tell me—" Mary began hesitantly. "I'm wondering how you and Derek are doing. Just between you and me," she quickly added.

Meredith bit her lip and thought for what she hoped wasn't too long about her answer. They seemed good, being out of the bubble again like this for a few months now. They were having sex again, if that's what Mary wanted to know. And talking. Normal conversations, mostly—flirty banter in the hallways at work, dinner table discussions about work and Emily—but also intimate whispers in the dark after sex or just before sleep and sometimes, in words slick with tears, about how scary all of these new things were. Her heart didn't hurt anymore though, and she was pretty sure that his didn't either, at least until all this started happening.

"We're good," Meredith said, feeling a bit awkward that Mary seemed to know how close she had come to divorcing her son. "Better."

"I don't presume that life has been very easy for you this past year or two," Mary lead, practically coaching Meredith to answer a question that wasn't asked. Why did Mary want to talk about this, Meredith thought, trying to resist literally squirming for being so uncomfortable.

"No," Meredith murmured quietly. "No, it hasn't. Just after losing the baby, and then almost—" Why the hell was she talking about this? She didn't talk about the baby to anyone; it took her a year to talk about it with Derek, and even then, she wasn't sure if either of them had ever acknowledged just how close they had come to ending it in the months leading up to the summer. Why was it just coming out of her mouth now to her mother-in-law? Meredith recoiled, checked herself. "It was very hard," she finished.

"I'm so proud of you both for fighting for it," Mary said. Meredith watched her push her wedding band around her finger, and realized that if Mary had always worn it, she had never noticed until now. "Derek is so happy with you," Mary said. "You and Emily are his whole world."

"I feel the same way about him," Meredith replied, trying to tread the line between comfort and over-sharing, though she hoped Mary could listen past that and hear the sincerity in her words.

"I'll admit, when you two first started dating, I didn't approve," Mary said. Meredith winced. Where was this going? Where was this going? Where was this going? She wasn't much on rehashing the first few months of their relationship, uneasy about the anguish of it all despite its obvious happy ending. She was especially uneasy talking about it with Derek's mother. What mother _would_ want their only son, her doctor son, to pursue a relationship with his one-night stand? Meredith didn't need to be told that she wasn't liked in the beginning; she knew that well enough on her own.

"There was just so much history with Addison, and it seemed silly to throw something away that made him happy. I didn't realize that neither of them had been happy for a long time," Mary continued. Meredith fought the urge to physically cringe at the direction the conversation was taking, but instead, she just nodded. This was why the answer to 'can we talk?' had always been an evasive 'no' from her for years.

"Can I just ask you, Meredith—how is Derek doing?" Mary asked. "Please don't lie," she begged. "I can see it in his face."

Meredith said nothing for what felt like a year and a half but was actually most likely all of about fifteen seconds. Derek didn't want anyone to see him as weak, even if the truth was that he wasn't weak at all, just feeling a bit so in light of a terrifying prognosis. He didn't want anyone to know that he was worried, though he wouldn't have minded if they thought he was prepared. He especially wouldn't want Mary to think as much when all of this was being done to try to ease her burden. Mary seemed to read her mind. "I won't tell him we had this conversation if you won't," she promised. "How is he doing?" she asked again, very gently.

She hesitated again, like she would betray Derek somehow if she told Mary how he was really doing. Derek had been nothing but upbeat, though slightly tense, with Mary. Across the country in Seattle, it was another story. No one at home even knew, much less understood, this side of Derek. She looked up, making eye contact with Mary for the first time she was acutely conscious of, and immediately she wanted to tell her.

"Not very well," Meredith said carefully. "He goes to work, he's functioning. But he's up researching treatment protocols and clinical trials when he should be sleeping. He's calling oncologists during his lunch break," she said as it started to spill out. "I've never seen him so scared."

Mary's eyes filled with tears, and she nodded sadly. "That's what I was afraid of," she murmured.

"I don't know how to help him," Meredith admitted. "I think he will be ok eventually. But I don't know how to help him now."

"I don't either," Mary said, her voice wavering dangerously. She wiped away a few of the tears that trickled down with one hand, the other resting on Meredith's knee.

"He's worried about helping you," Meredith laughed a little to keep from crying herself, dabbing at her own eyes with one of her knuckles.

"They all are," Mary said knowingly, so finely in tune with her four daughters as well as her son. "I tried to teach them that you should have faith in the times that you don't know for sure. A lot of times, it seemed that that's all we had to go on," Mary told Meredith. "I tried to show them that if you keep walking with the faith that everything will be all right—even if you don't know where you're going—eventually, you get where you're supposed to be anyway."

Meredith shook her head. No wonder this wasn't working for Derek, who could trust in people but found it difficult to leap into the unknowable. "Derek has to know. He believes in things," she added quickly, "He's not faithless. But it's hard for him to keep going when he doesn't know. He tries for me and Emily. He's trying for you now."

"They're all trying so hard," Mary nodded.

"They are," Meredith said. She was used to patients feeling like they needed to confess their fears, and in that way she had often given a hand to hold, but this might have been the first time that someone had come to her with such anguished concern about someone whom they both loved so much. She could try to reassure Mary the way she would reassure a patient, but Meredith could barely reassure herself that any of this would be ok. Instead, she just tried to tell Mary what she did know.

"Derek is just…," she stopped as she tried to find the right words. "I mean, a lot of us don't like to not know what's going to happen next. Nobody likes surprises. I guess it's a doctor thing, wanting to be so prepared. But he can't really prepare for this."

"No," Mary agreed, offering no solution, just a bit more understanding. She squeezed Meredith's hand a little. "Does he ever talk about his father?" she asked. "How he died?"

Honestly, she didn't really know much else about Jack Shepherd's death. Derek didn't talk about it much and she never felt like it was her place to ask. All she had was some details and snippets of a past life that she held close to her, but thought of only sometimes. "He had a ruptured brain aneurysm," Meredith said.

"Yes, he did," Mary replied, sighing as she remembered. "He collapsed at work and there was just nothing anybody could do. He was gone before I ever made it to the hospital. Derek, obviously, took it very hard," she said tenderly. "I mean the girls were devastated too, but he was very much his father's boy. I lost Jack that day, but I lost a little bit of all of us, I think. It killed me that the kids' innocence was gone," she murmured. "It'll be 33 years in May."

"I'm very sorry for your loss," Meredith said, squeezing back on Mary's hand. "I know Derek still thinks about him all the time. He seemed like he was a wonderful father."

Mary smiled wistfully. "He was. And it will be a happy day for me when I can be with him again. But not now," she said with a steely resolve. "I'm not ready to leave these kids yet."

"They're not ready to lose you," Meredith said, never feeling more comfortable than she did now to speak for all of them.

"I'm going to try my best, but I don't know."

"Well," Meredith said, trying to learn as best she could. "Just keep trying, right?"

"Yes," Mary said, and returned Meredith's hesitant smile. "Just promise me that you'll take care of him," she pleaded. "Help him keep trying. He doesn't know how to be alone."

"I've already promised him that," Meredith said immediately, thinking back to the things she said to him on their wedding day. "He won't be alone."

Absolutely exhausted, Mary went to bed soon after their conversation, while Meredith stayed up and waited for Derek. She was content to sit and watch television for awhile, flipping through the channels from one Christmas movie to another before finally settling back on the news. Looking over her shoulder, she eyed the suitcase full of presents and thought for a moment about putting them under the tree, but ultimately decided to wait for Derek.

By eleven, she had gotten up to look out the window, to see if she saw even a faint hint of headlights coming down the street. She was one of those kinds of wives now? The ones who looked out the window and waited for their husbands to come home? Who the hell went to the bar for three hours on Christmas Eve? Someone whose mother could be dying, she told herself.

A half hour later, she lay down on the couch, too tired to care that she still felt a little bit like a guest in this house and normally guests didn't sprawl out on their host's furniture. The television was on, but the volume was low, and Meredith could barely pay attention to it as she fought sleep. When she heard the jangling of keys and finally the opening of the front door, she got up and went to the foyer.

"Hey," she said, eyeing Derek up and down cautiously. Still wearing the dress pants and shirt that he'd worn to church earlier, he looked a bit disheveled, with his shirttail hanging out. "Where were you?"

"We just needed a break," he mumbled, his speech a little lazy, but not slurred.

"Are you drunk?" she asked when he took a very concentrated few steps toward her. The words came out in a much more disappointed tone than she meant them.

"Not really," Derek admitted, looking at her with sad eyes and sounding like he wished that he was.

"You didn't drive back here, did you?" Meredith asked worriedly, taking his coat and hanging it on one of the hooks by the door.

Derek shook his head. "Kathleen drove. She'll bring the car back in the morning," he said, trying to sober up. "Where're Mom and Emily?" he asked, looking around as they walked into the empty living room.

"Both are in bed," she replied, sitting down with him on the couch.

He sighed, and told her about his night out with his sisters—how he, Nancy, and Kathleen started to argue over Mary's treatment protocol and how Anne and Maggie got upset because they didn't understand what anyone was saying. He talked about how he asked about the treatments only to find out that the four of them had scheduled everything out for the next two months already, and how he wrote Anne a blank check to use for a wig if that's what their mother wanted, because he didn't know what else to do.

He talked for over a half hour, and she just stayed quiet and listened. By the time he got to the part of the story where Kathleen drove them all home because she was the only one who didn't have at least one drink, he had talked himself sober again.

"I will learn how to handle this eventually," he finally said, apologizing to her as if he was ashamed of his own fear. "I promise."

"I know," she assured him. "Do you want to?" she asked, motioning to the suitcase and then to the Christmas tree.

"You waited for me?" Derek asked incredulously, pointing to the unopened suitcase.

"Yeah," she whispered. Her heart broke a little when he sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands. She sat down next to him, and when she kissed him, she tasted the scotch. "I didn't want to do any of it without you," she said. "I'm always going to wait for you."


	19. A little bit stronger than the past

_These days, a little bit longer than the last  
And all of your ways, a little bit stronger than the past  
And your light, found my bottle in the night  
Kept me in this fight, gave me second life_

* * *

A few weeks had passed since Christmas, a few weeks since Derek realized that Meredith couldn't pull him up all by herself. Since they got back to Seattle a few days after the holiday, he had met her for lunch almost every day. The relief he saw in her face when he sat down at the table with her was enough to alleviate almost all of the guilt he felt that he wasn't using the time to research treatments that could save his mother. He hoped that she didn't notice, or didn't mind, that he was still spending every spare moment at work in his office. Late at night, when he brought an oncology study to bed with him, one printed off an online database and too thick to be bound with a stapler, she let him read it for a few minutes, but then she took it without a word, laid it gently on the nightstand, and wrapped her arms around him.

Their fourth wedding anniversary fell on a weekday, and there was no extra time to spend in bed in each other's arms, no time for I-still-adore-you sex and a box of cold cereal shared between them afterward. There was a three-year-old who would demand breakfast, jobs to go to, a spot waiting in daycare.

So after a fully-clothed, sexless morning, Derek found himself in his office, having left before Meredith and Emily under the guise of needing to get some work done before his first surgery. He'd barely been there for an hour, quickly finishing up some reading he had started the evening before, when a light knock came at his door. After two short raps, Meredith opened the door and peeked in, smiling wryly at him. She had her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, and she wore a navy long-sleeved shirt under her light blue scrubs.

"Hi," she murmured, lingering in the door frame for a second before walking straight towards him, closing the door behind her.

He scrambled—discreetly, he hoped—to get the papers and open journals on his desk into some kind of discernible order before she saw them. He felt like he had his worrying more under control (or at least good enough), but he wasn't sure she would agree. He was relieved to know that the first three chemo treatments had been textbook procedures, and that though the side effects were the worst during the first week after each one, his mother had recovered nicely from her surgery and was almost always in good spirits. He couldn't explain it, not to anyone, not to Meredith when she asked, but he couldn't help himself. If he couldn't prevent it, he at least had to know as much as he could. He could not allow himself to be blindsided again.

He grinned and sat back in his chair when she leaned down and kissed him, then climbed on top of him with a leg on either side and kissed him again, running her hands down his chest. "You left early this morning," she said, her lips pressed to his jaw.

"Yeah, well I wanted to be out on time for our date," he said, playfully catching her bottom lip between his lips. He kissed her again as one hand found her lower back; the other cupped her face.

"When's the last time we went on a date?" Meredith mused aloud.

"Exactly."

"What's your day look like?" she asked.

"Rounds. Laminectomy," he shrugged. Business as usual. "And I think I'm taking you out for a steak dinner."

"I think you are," she smirked flirtatiously. "Can you get Emily and meet me in the lobby at six-thirty?"

"Izzie?" he asked.

"Yeah. Well, Alex is going to take her home," she clarified. "Is that ok?'

"We'll get her after?"

"Actually," she murmured, her hands dipping lower as she shifted just a little. "I packed her an overnight bag."

"Dr. Grey," he murmured back, reaching for her. They didn't have sex in on-call rooms very often anymore, and in his office, hardly ever. Whether this was an effort to stave off the mundane that he knew often came with marriage, or just an anniversary gift, he wasn't sure. But he wasn't going to say no.

She let him slip his hands under her scrub top and the shirt underneath, and run them up and down the sides of her body for a moment. He climbed higher, cupping her breasts over her bra, and she smiled into their kiss.

He started to respond, growing hard with Meredith on top of him. She locked that door behind her when she came in, right? Either way, he was caring less and less. She started on his belt buckle, and he reciprocated, making quick work of unhooking her bra.

"You know, if you wanted to make this a regular thing," he said, trailing his lips down to her neck and then onto the top of her chest, "I wouldn't say no."

"Dr. Shepherd," she husked out, with her head back and long neck extended, hands in his hair. "How would you get any work done?"

"I don't care about work."

"Work's stupid," she agreed.

Just when he started to pull her shirts over her head, her pager vibrated against both of them, beeping loudly in the relative silence of the room. She sighed in frustration, and groaned when she looked down at the device clipped to her waistband.

"I'm sorry, 911," she said. She shifted, backed off of him, and smoothed her rumpled scrubs. She kissed him a twice more, once on his neck and then a last time on the lips.

"Meredith," he growled, throwing his head back as he remained in his desk chair. He reached for her wrist as she tried to get up.

"Work calls," she reminded him, but she couldn't seem to stop kissing him despite moving off him.

"I thought you said work was stupid," he countered.

"It is," she assured him, quickly retying the drawstring of her pants.

"Meet me later?" he asked.

"I'm scrubbing in on a craniotomy right after rounds," she replied hastily, but with one more kiss, one that lingered for a moment, she promised him, "I'll make it up to you."

"I'm gonna hold you to that."

She grinned. "Happy anniversary."

The rest of his day passed slowly, but without incident. After spending the morning in surgery, he booked another for the following day in between following up on post-op patients and consulting in the pit and clinic when paged.

At six, he changed into the suit he brought with him and brought Emily down to the lobby to meet Meredith. They waited there, away from the door and the cold drafts that swept in every time it opened.

"Daddy?" Emily asked as she stood on one of the chairs in the lobby. She pulled her coat on over her long-sleeved blue cotton dress with minimal help from him.

"What, Bean?"

"I did a project today."

"You did?"

"Yeah, with _scissors!_ I practiced!"

"Wow, I'm glad to hear that! What did you make?"

Before he could get an answer out of her, she looked past him, growing wide-eyed as she sucked in a delighted breath. "Oooh, Mommy!" Emily cried. He whipped his head around and saw Meredith walking towards them. Her long tan trench coat covered a short cocktail dress, a fitted black sleeveless thing with a dipping neckline, and heels to match. She'd somehow found time to do her makeup and her hair, exchanging that morning's ponytail for loose waves cascading gently down her back.

"Hi." Meredith grinned, and kissed him briefly, and then looked down at Emily, who was still staring at her happily, practically ready to clap her hands with the excitement of it.

"You're pretty!" she blurted out.

"Thank you. Are you ready to go to Alex and Izzie's house?" she asked. She zipped Emily's coat for her and took her hand as she hopped down from the chair.

"Is this what you meant when you said you would make it up to me?" he asked quietly, taking her garment bag for her, as they walked outside to the parking lot.

She stifled a short little laugh. "Look now, touch later."

Alex was waiting for them at their car, having moved his own car into an empty spot next to theirs. He got out and opened the back door when he saw them coming.

Derek always felt a little guilty leaving Emily with Meredith's friends. They weren't family (they were, Meredith always corrected), but Izzie, at least, was always genuinely happy to spend time with Emily and Alex was always at least agreeable. They had gotten their act together shortly after he and Meredith had, and had been engaged for a little over a year. He was pretty sure they—meaning Izzie—were planning a spring wedding, but he could never keep track of the love lives of Meredith's friends.

"Hey," Meredith said, shuffling Emily into the space between the two cars. "Thanks for taking her tonight."

"Yeah, well," Alex shrugged, and ruffled Emily's hair. "We'll have fun, right, squirt?"

Emily shrugged, then nodded. Derek never pegged Meredith's friends to be kid people. Well, except for George. And Izzie. But Alex and Cristina—they weren't kid people when he met them, and they still weren't, not really. But they loved Emily, Meredith's kid, even though sometimes they weren't sure how to react to her.

Derek opened the back door to their car and started undoing Emily's seat so he could move it to Alex's backseat.

"Where are you going?" Emily asked, turning around and wrapping her arms around both of Meredith's legs.

"We're going to go have dinner."

"I like dinner," she pouted, reconsidering her promised fun night with Alex and Izzie.

"I know," Meredith said, smiling as she pushed Emily's hair back off her forehead, "But we need some time alone."

"Why?"

"Because sometimes grownups need to just be by themselves."

"Is that how come you go to the hospital?"

"Mmm," Meredith paused. "Partly."

Derek glanced over at Emily from the backseat of Alex's car. There was a reason why they didn't move this car seat that much; shouldn't this process go more quickly?

"Alex?" Emily prodded. She had turned to face him again, but was still holding on to one of Meredith's legs, wrapping her arm around the back of her and gripping the bottom of her dress with one hand. "When you sneeze, your eyes always close. I know that cause I was sick."

"You're right."

"And you know what?" Emily said again. "Ladybugs are red and they got black dots on them."

"Yeah, you're right about that too."

Meredith shrugged. "We've been reading a lot of 'Ten Little Ladybugs,'" she explained.

"Are you gonna come get me after you eat dinner?"

"Actually, we're going to let you have a sleepover with Izzie and Alex tonight."

"We're gonna have pizza," Alex said. "Would that be good?"

Emily hesitated, turning back entirely towards Meredith and looking up at her expectantly. "You bringed Bear?" she asked, like the question would determine everything.

"Don't I always remember?" Meredith assured her gently. "He's in your bag."

"Don't worry, we'll load you full of pizza and cake," Alex promised. "It'll be fun."

"Have fun getting her to sleep tonight if you do," Meredith chuckled.

From inside Alex's car, Derek gave the car seat one last jostle, just to make sure that it was buckled in correctly and securely, before climbing out. "You're all set," he told Alex.

"All right, are you ready to go, squirt?" Alex asked Emily, lifting her into the backseat.

"Climb up," Derek instructed. "In your seat, so I can buckle you."

"I can do it," Emily assured him, maneuvering herself into her seat and through the shoulder straps. She gritted her teeth and tried to negotiate the buckles while Derek supervised and Meredith rattled off a few last-minute instructions.

"Bedtime is at 8:30. She's got pajamas and a pull-up in here, her bear's in here, and two books. She should be all set," she said, stowing the bag by Emily's feet. "Just make sure she brushes her teeth before bed?"

"Thanks, Alex," Derek said, finishing off the last stubborn buckle for Emily. He kissed her goodbye before moving out of the way to let Meredith in.

"Bye, Em." She leaned in and kissed Emily's round face. "Have fun," she said to both Emily and Alex.

"You two keep your fun in control," Alex smirked as he shut the back door. "You already have a honeymoon baby."

"Haha," Meredith replied sardonically, rolling her eyes. "Bye."

Her friends had teased her for weeks after their wedding, when they all found out about the baby. There were playful jabs about already and jumping the gun and how they wouldn't be Meredith and Derek if they weren't in over their heads. And Meredith had let them talk and play, but in bed one night, as she and Derek talked and worried and built up excitement, they figured out that Emily came before that, closer to Christmas than to their honeymoon. And four years later, her friends still teased, but Meredith had kept this intimate detail for themselves.

He would have taken her to Joe's first, and then to dinner, but they went to the bar in the steakhouse instead in the interest of being alone. They never had much time to experiment with the city's restaurants, and after having a baby, they had even less. When he asked her if this place, where they went on their first real date, was all right, she said yes, of course it was.

He checked their coats, and when he came back to the bar, she was sipping on a glass of red wine and slid a glass of scotch across the counter to him. They talked about their days and their surgeries and hospital politics while they waited for a table and started on a second drink.

By the time the hostess showed them to their table, he was ready to go home and take that dress off of her. She was addictive, the way she smiled and laughed and reached for his hand when they walked, and the way she let him know that she was thankful that they were happy. Despite everything—despite the miscarriage and the marriage that had nearly imploded and parents who got distant or sick or both—she was right there with him, and they were happy again.

The waitress took their order, and when they exhausted discussing that year's interns and who might be named chief resident after Cristina and the rest of her year moved on to complete their fellowships, Meredith swallowed and looked up at Derek.

"Cristina's looking at Cleveland Clinic for her fellowship."

"Really?" he replied cautiously, trying to gauge her true feelings on the topic.

She shrugged. "They have a good cardio program."

"What do you think?" he asked, and took a sip of his water.

"It doesn't matter what I think."

He'd never forgotten what Meredith said to him one night, years ago, when he found out that she had covered for Cristina, who had been covering for Burke. She was there when he wasn't. He didn't understand some of their friendship, but he was grateful to Cristina for taking care of her during the times when he wouldn't or couldn't. Over the past few years, Meredith leaned on him more, and at first, her relationship with Cristina strained and pulled as it changed. But they stayed there for each other. Cristina was one of the first people to hold their daughter. She mattered very much.

"You're her best friend," Derek reminded her. "It matters."

"I don't want her to go," Meredith sighed, "But I can't say that because I might go too. We all might go and not come back."

"How's your mom?" Meredith asked a moment or two later in an attempt to change the subject.

He could practically feel his chest tighten with the pain of it. He knew she was just trying to check on him, to make sure he was ok and ask questions and know things, but it was all he could to do make himself stop thinking about it for tonight.

He didn't want to ruin their anniversary, their one night out, by talking about the day last week, when Nancy called him at work practically in tears to ask if he thought she should take their mom back to the hospital for a shot of Zofran because she couldn't keep the pill form of it down long enough after chemo for its anti-nausea effects to actually work. He didn't tell her about when he called Anne to check on everyone, and the conversation ended in a fight because she couldn't get medically-specific enough for him and she cried because he and Nancy and Kathleen could all understand what was happening better than she and Maggie could and no one was explaining it to them. He didn't tell her how helpless he felt that he was across the country, unable to do anything as his sisters handled this without him.

"The same," he nodded. "On schedule."

"That's great," Meredith replied. She reached for his hand and squeezed, when he met her eyes. "For somebody her age, Derek? That's really good."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is," he agreed. He realized he was acting stiff, stilted, towards her, but he couldn't help himself. "I'm sorry, I just don't want to talk about it. Not right now."

"Oh," she murmured, nodding slightly. "Ok."

He tried to smile for her, and squeezed back on her hand. "I just want tonight to be about us."

By the time their steaks came, the conversation had moved back to Emily, as it often did. He'd heard people say that once you had kids, it was difficult to talk about other things, even when you wanted to. It wasn't that he and Meredith couldn't talk about other things, he realized as Meredith recounted how Emily stumbled over the word 'intimidating' the night before during a bedtime story, trying to repeat what Meredith had said. A lot of the time, they didn't want to talk about anything else. She was their shared experience, the love of their lives, why they got up in the morning.

"That preschool is having the open house next week," Meredith said, cutting a bite of her meat.

"We should both go," he nodded. He wanted to know exactly what the place looked like and felt like, everything about where Emily might spend her days.

"I think so."

Next year, Emily would be four years old. She needed to go to school, but what were the chances that they'd find a place that could accommodate their schedules so well? He was pretty sure that most preschools did not open as early as seven AM and close as late as seven at night. There must be other people who would get to know Emily and care for her and teach her with vested interest, but it would be with sadness that they'd leave Brenda and the daycare at Seattle Grace behind. How was this going to work, this business of helping Emily grow up?

"Can't we stay with Brenda another year?" he mused aloud.

"I wish," Meredith sighed, and immediately he sensed the same worries in her. "Emily loves her. I love her. But we've got to put her in school sometime."

"So I've been thinking," Meredith said after she pushed her half-eaten slice of cheesecake away. "A lot. About everything. Stuff we talked about over the summer, mostly. And I was thinking that it's not really a good time. I mean, it feels like a good time. Compared to last year, it really does. But everything with your mom right now, it's really scary."

Derek nodded. She could be direct in everyday conversation, but she tended to ramble when she was trying to say something big. "It is."

"But then I was thinking that I start my fellowship in a year, and we might have to move, and that might not be a good time," she sighed. "I'm really scared of that too."

"Meredith," he tried to interrupt.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is it's never going to be a good time," she spilled. "It's never going to be the perfect time. But I want this with you, and I trust this enough to take a risk. I think we can do it."

"What are you saying?" he asked, trying hard to negotiate between the desire to sigh with contentment that she was finally here, trusting what they had, with the panic that made him ask, 'Do what?'

"I think I'm ready to have another baby."

"Oh," he breathed out before he could stop himself long enough to come up with something more appropriate to say. Oh? Who could only muster an 'oh' when their wife said something of that magnitude? He had been waiting for her to be ready for months, and here she was, finally ready, and all he could say was, 'oh.'"

Meredith's hopeful expression sank when he couldn't muster up anymore of a reaction than that. "I should have waited until we were at home," she said, looking around and shaking her head. "It's just that after everything, I wasn't sure if I even wanted to, but now I know that I do. When you're ready, I'm ready," she said quietly. "I just wanted to tell you that."

"Are you pregnant?"

She looked at him confusedly. "No."

"You're still on your birth control, right?" he asked, a knee-jerk reaction that he couldn't have stopped if he tried.

"Yeah," she winced. "Yeah, I am."

"Ok."

Jesus Christ, why couldn't he tell her what she wanted to hear? Or cushion what he wanted to say, at least a little bit? They had sex last night, and would again when they got home. They almost had this morning. Could she already have gotten pregnant, or might she from now on? He wanted her, he wanted this, but lately, it was all he could do to keep his head above water.

"It's a stupid idea," she breathed, visibly flustered. "Let's just forget I brought it up."

"No," he tried to apologize. "Meredith."

"No, Derek, it's ok. I completely understand. There's absolutely no pressure. I just…I look at Emily now, and I think, 'I could do that again,'" she said almost reverently. "And I know I was the reason why we weren't before, so I just wanted to let you know, I want to when you want to."

He thought of Emily too: the soft weight of her in his arms in the middle of the night during her infancy; the dribbling, gummy smiles he got when he came home from work; a tiny hand clasped in his as he lifted her, wriggling and screaming with joy, above the ocean's breaking waves.

"I want to," he assured her. "One day, I really do. It's just…it's a lot right now with everything with my family."

"I know."

He sighed. This thing, this cancer, might go on for years. And there were no guarantees. Tumors grew and families fought. People accidentally bashed their brains in and babies went to preschool. People changed and moved and lost things every single day. "There's always going to be something," he said after a brief silence.

"That's what I think," Meredith said gently.

"I just don't want last year to happen again," he explained. "I can't lose anyone else."

She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes at the mention of it. "I don't know if it will happen again. I hope it doesn't. I don't know if I can hurt like that again. But I know that I won't lose you."

"And I won't lose you."

"You won't lose me," she promised.

They paid their tab soon after, and the valet went to bring their car around for them. Derek slipped his coat on, and held Meredith's out for her. While they waited for the valet, Meredith's phone rang.

"Izzie," she mumbled quickly before she answered. "Hey. Is everything ok?" she asked. She nodded for Derek's benefit before she replied, "I didn't call to check in because I trust you." She moved aside for another couple to get to the coat check. "Ok, put her on."

Derek waited while Meredith spoke with Emily. Her tone changed from excited as she heard about pizza with pepperoni, to quiet and comforting as she reminded her that they would see her in the morning and it was ok to go to sleep at Izzie and Alex's house.

"Emily wants to say goodnight," she said, passing the phone to Derek when she was finished.

"Hi, Bean," he said.

"Hi, Daddy," Emily replied brightly, any uncertainty she may have had gone from talking to her mother.

"Are you having fun with Alex and Izzie?"

"Daddy, I had a cupcake with pink icing on it," she said excitedly. He took that as a yes.

"That sounds delicious, Bean. Was it good?"

"Yeah. And you know what?"

"What?"

"I helped make it too."

He laughed a little at that, picturing the disaster that must be their kitchen. "You had a busy night, Em."

"Yeah," Emily agreed. "But now Izzie said it's time to get in my bed."

"I think she's right. I'll see you in the morning, ok?" he assured her. "I love you."

He passed the phone back to Meredith just as the valet pulled up to the front of the restaurant with their car. He opened Meredith's door for her, and then went around to the driver's seat. By the time he got in the car, Meredith was finishing up a conversation with Izzie about pull-ups and underwear and when Emily should be wearing each. When she finished, she looked over at him and smiled, and they drove home.

After a few minutes of measured silence, after they made their way out of the city and back towards home, Meredith took an audible breath and broke the quiet. "Can I just tell you one more thing?" she asked, and continued before he could say anything. "I want this. But I don't want to try. I don't want to be stressed, thinking about the calendar every day."

"Ok," he said, drawing the word out. "Then how do you want to do this?"

"I just want it to happen when it's supposed to happen."

"So you don't want to try," he clarified.

"No. I'll stop taking my birth control though."

"How is that not trying?"

"I don't want to keep track of the days that it could happen and make sure we have sex on those days and do headstands and worry about your sperm count," she blurted out in a breath. "I don't want to do that. If it happens, it happens."

"If it happens, it happens," he repeated.

Glancing over at her briefly, he felt almost like he didn't know her. Sometimes he felt like he was always the one who was ready, always the one who was waiting, while she struggled to catch up to where he was. He looked at her and wondered where this faith came from. "You're sure you're not scared?"

"No. I _am_ scared. But I trust us."

He paused, and considered. Were wanting to be ready and being ready the same? Was her trust only temporary, something she willed up for an anniversary, this milestone of shared love, that a year ago, neither knew if they would reach? What if she didn't stay in this place? What if they waited until his mother finished chemo, until he knew a little more about whether or not his life would unravel in his hands, to move forward? Then she'd be fielding fellowship offers—several of them, he was pretty sure, many of which were out of state. There would be decisions to make, and if they moved, he'd have to find a new job too. There would be a child's life to uproot and a house to sell and friends to leave. And maybe, in the midst of all that, she wouldn't be ready anymore.

How long would this readiness last? He loved her now more than he ever had, but he also knew her. He understood that she still scared easily sometimes, and these were all really scary things that they could not circumvent. He couldn't help but worry now that this offer might not be good then.

"Ok," he found himself saying.

"What do you mean, 'Ok?'" she asked.

"Let's do this," he said before he could think another second about what the words meant.

At home, it didn't take them long to make their way up to the bedroom. As they moved quickly down the hallway, he nipped at her neck when he felt her nails on his back, kissing and licking and knowing they were alone and he could do this in the hallway if he wanted to.

Out of habit, he closed the door behind them before backing her up against the bed. He drew as close to her as he could, kissing every inch of exposed skin on her neck, behind her ear, down her jaw line, dipping into her cleavage. He unzipped her dress from the back and waited for a second while she stepped out of it, leaving it in a rumpled mess on the floor with her shoes, but then he was back. He ran his hands through her hair, then down and over her breasts, still covered with a black lacy bra, different from the one she'd been wearing that morning.

"My favorite bra," he murmured in her ear. He unhooked it and threw it on the floor with the rest of their clothes, his thumbs gliding over her nipples, before his hands dipped lower towards his favorite panties.

"Told you I'd make it up to you," she said.

It felt like her hands were everywhere: in his hair, nails dragging gently across his scalp; down his chest, kneading his pectorals; on the small of his back, pulling him closer; on his belt buckle and then inside his boxers, on him, stroking him hard.

She pushed her whole body up against him, and he groaned as his erection pressed against her belly. "Not fair," she mumbled returning his kisses as she pushed his jacket off him and undid his tie. "You're still dressed."

She made quick work of the buttons on his shirt, and pushed his trousers down past his knees. She hooked both hands under the waistband of his boxers, but didn't pull them off, and he couldn't help but thrust impatiently once or twice towards her belly. He stepped out of everything except his boxers, and moved her closer to the bed, until the backs of her knees met the mattress.

He laid her down and she grinned her approval as he used his thigh as a wedge between hers. Smoothing the hair off her face, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth.

"Derek," she moaned as she pulled away. She ran her hand up the back of his thigh, squeezing the muscles there as she kissed his mouth over and over, and then his jaw, crying out at the sensation of his stubble on her skin and his hand in her panties.

He was ready; if not for that, then definitely for this. That morning, in his office, had been such a tease. Before he could roll on top of her, peel their remaining clothing off, and go, she rolled on top of him. Straddling him with one leg on either side, she couldn't help but grind against him a little, despite still being clothed. He couldn't stop himself from groaning out loud after one particularly devastating shift of her hips against him. Work was stupid, but so was foreplay. What the hell were they waiting for?

He hooked his thumbs under the elastic of her panties. She said she was still taking her birth control, right? She did say that? Suddenly, she was on top of him and kissing him and it felt _good_ but now he was worried. He couldn't remember the last time, if ever, he had been worried just before sex. Nervous, maybe, his first time and the first time with Addison—he was too drunk to be nervous the first time with Meredith—but legitimately worried?

"So how does this work exactly?" he found himself asking.

"What are you talking about?"

She stopped what she was doing and sat straight up on top of him. He was killing the mood, he knew, but he just had to...check…before they could continue. He said he wanted to take the chance, but when it came time to make good on that declaration, he found himself hesitating.

"We're letting whatever happens happen," he husked out.

"Yeah," she frowned. "That's what you want, right?"

"Is that what you want?"

"I want what you want."

"Ok," he said, moving under her ever so slightly. "But do we mean right now?"

"I took my pill this morning."

"So this is definitely not part of throwing caution to the wind?"

"Not technically, no," she said. She crossed her arms over her chest, like she realized all of a sudden that she was naked. "Derek, we don't have to do this," she said softly.

"No, I wanted to. I want to."

She rolled off of him and lay down on her side on the bed next to him, facing him with little space between them. "Let's wait," she whispered. "We can wait."

She ran her fingers down his bare arm, and kissed him more gently this time, reassuring him. He reached for her, grabbed at the back of her thigh with one hand and moved closer to her. He threaded a few fingers through her hair and kissed her back, moving his hand down to cup her face, and then further to rest over her beating heart. "But you're ready," he offered quietly, almost apologizing. She got herself here, and somewhere along the way, he had fallen behind.

"I think we can rise to the occasion," she clarified. "I don't know if we'll ever be ready."

"We'll rise to the occasion," he echoed.

"If you want to," she added quickly. Her fingers tangled in his hair, and she nuzzled closer, kissing his neck.

"Maybe soon?" he asked, taking a deep, drawing breath as she wrapped her arms around him.

Afterward, they lay together under the covers, needing the blankets and body heat to stave off the cold January air. Neither he nor Meredith had gotten out of bed to dress yet, and for awhile, neither one of them spoke. They lay there spooning as the minutes ticked by. They both had to get up in a few hours, but he wasn't ready to go to sleep.

With her in his arms, his elbows locked with hers and his knees flush against the backs of hers, he just felt better. He couldn't explain it, but she gave him rest. He kissed her bare shoulder and took a breath, taking her in.

If he was being honest, he remembered other things, smaller moments, much more vividly than their wedding. The lavender sweater she was wearing the first time he told her that he loved her. Mornings when they were both off from work, but before Emily, when all there was to do was sleep in and have sex. The way she slipped his engagement ring on her finger for the first time. How she passed a newborn Emily to him to hold, with a stunned look of joy on her face and tears in her eyes.

He did remember a few things about their winter wedding. Her white dress, tight across her chest, with a modest veil and her blonde hair glowing around her glowing face. The way she walked herself down the aisle, confidently towards her own future. The things they promised each other- _my constant friend, my faithful partner, my one true love._ Afterwards, how the words 'ours' and 'always' and 'forever' tasted so good on his tongue and how they whispered them to each other over and over throughout the night.

The memory of the food and the flowers and the music and the details had faded over the years, but how she felt in his arms when they danced and the smile on her face when Mark and Cristina toasted them, those were the things he remembered so clearly.

She had changed since that day, grown more into herself and into their life together. Looking at her now, he never could have known then that she'd be this woman four years later. She had carried his child. They'd lost another. They'd fought, and then fought for what they had. And here she was, still standing by him, even though he was never perfect and had sometimes treated her with far less compassion than she deserved.

And then they'd made it here—a real, honest, loving marriage. He didn't just love her; he adored her.

"I love you," he murmured, breathing the words right into her skin, not sure of any other way to express it more adequately.

"Still?" she asked, squeezing his hands.

He squeezed back. "More."

"Me too."


	20. Day on heavy's got me thinking

_We'll take all our time on this one  
Cause we can only smile for so long  
It's hard to focus on what's passing  
When we don't know what's ahead  
Day on heavy's got me thinking  
A perfect day can die by a telephone wire  
Day on heavy's got me thinking  
Apparently, we all expire_

* * *

On a dreary day in early March, one when the spitting rain and biting cold had gone on for what felt like years, Meredith spent the first part of her morning consulting in the pit on a car accident that had come with the bad weather. She stopped briefly at the nurses' station when Dr. Caroline Marchione, her intern for the day, caught up with her there.

"Dr. Grey, the CT results for Mr. Kincaid," she said, passing the envelope to Meredith.

"Oh," Meredith murmured as soon as she held the films up to the light. She put them up on the wall and flicked the light on so Dr. Marchione could see them too.

"What do you see?" she prompted.

"He's got a bleed in his frontal lobe."

"Exactly. Ok, let's go tell him that he's going to need surgery."

"Dr. Grey," the Chief interrupted, catching up with her before they could go anywhere. He acknowledged Marchione with a slight nod, but focused immediately back on Meredith. Dr. Marchione checked her pager, even though no one had paged, and then walked away so as not to listen to a conversation she wasn't supposed to be privy to.

"Chief?"

Meredith looked at him with the willing smile an employee gives to a boss, and nothing more. There would always be something between them, something of a shared past, something that he always would feel a need to atone for, but she had stopped feeling like he had a hand in breaking her when she stopped feeling broken.

He nodded. "I wanted to be the first to congratulate you. The board has reviewed your fellowship application and we'd like to extend you an offer to do your fellowship here at Seattle Grace. Pending your passing of the boards," he added, after clearing his throat a little.

"Oh," she said, setting putting Mr. Kincaid's films back in the envelope and turning to fully face him. "Thank you, sir."

Meredith was certain back when she had applied that she'd get an offer to stay here and do her fellowship. She didn't mean to sound cocky, but she knew that if for some reason she couldn't go, she could always stay. It was the wanting to stay that she wasn't sure of yet. Still, it was a relief to get something. None of the other offers had come back yet, and though she had months before she had to make a final decision, the enormity of a potential choice was starting to weigh on her.

"The board is very impressed with you," he said in a tone that hinted of personal satisfaction. "We don't want to lose you. You'll receive an official letter, of course, and HR should be in contact with you over the next few weeks about salary and everything else, but we do want you to stay on here. We'll do everything we can to keep you," he assured her. "And on a personal note," he continued, pausing for a moment like he wasn't sure if he should say what he was about to say, like certain things were still out of bounds. "Your mother would be proud. You'll be a great surgeon."

"Thank you." She didn't have to force the words, but they came out awkwardly anyway. She shifted, and he cleared his throat again. They never knew how to end a conversation well once Ellis had found her way into it.

"Well, then," he said, like he wasn't sure how to proceed." Everything's fine with you? Your daughter?"

"Yes, sir. She's great."

She had realized a few years ago that he couldn't help it. He couldn't help feeling like he needed to protect her, to step in where her father didn't and her mother couldn't. He rarely asked about Emily, but when he did, it was always in a careful and distanced way, acknowledging that Meredith's life was none of his business, not really. He'd only even interacted directly with Emily a handful of times, as a swaddled baby on Meredith's first day back to work, and occasionally in the hallways when their paths crossed on the way to and from daycare. He would smile at her and Meredith, but talk only to Meredith and not to Emily. She knew that Emily was why he had gone easier on her last summer, why he had let her and Derek have all that time off without much problem. He had never said so, but he couldn't fix Meredith so he had given her the freedom where he could to fix what she could for herself.

"Good," he nodded. "Glad to hear it." He got a little quieter after that, like he knew he was overstepping his bounds again. "We would like you to stay, Meredith. Please let me know if there's anything I can do."

She nodded, and he continued down the hallway. Dr. Marchione went back to the nurses' station, but asked nothing and simply followed Meredith the opposite way down the hallway to the room they had put the patient she had admitted that morning. One fellowship offer, even if it was the one she was least sure she wanted and the one she was most sure that she would get, made her feel just a little more secure. She at least had somewhere to go now, even if that somewhere was still right here. She wanted to tell someone—Derek, or Cristina maybe—but the subdural hematoma in her patient's frontal lobe needed to be addressed now and the fellowship would have to wait.

"Mr. Kincaid," she said brightly, rapping lightly on the door before she walked in.

"Rick," Mr. Kincaid corrected her while he reclined against the pillow with his eyes closed.

"Rick. How are you feeling?"

"I'm ok," the man said tiredly. He was about her age, on his way to work when another car slid on an icy patch of road and slammed right into the back of his car. He was dressed in a suit when he came in, but he was now lying in bed in a hospital gown; he came in to the ER alone, but his wife had now joined him. She reached for his hand when Meredith entered the room.

"Any fatigue?" Meredith asked, taking notice of the way he didn't even bother to open his eyes when they came in.

"'S just hard to see," he mumbled.

"You can't see?" she asked, growing concerned. "Can you open your eyes for me?" She shined a light in one eye and then the other when he obeyed, but nothing looked acutely different from her exam about an hour before.

"Just kind of blurry. The light hurts to look at."

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "Mr. Kincaid, we got the results of your CT back," she said, speaking gently but deliberately. "When the car behind you hit yours, you got forced forward and your head hit your steering wheel. The scan showed that you have some bleeding in the frontal lobe of your brain called a subdural hematoma, and we need to operate to correct it."

"Today?" his wife, a pretty blonde woman who wore no makeup and was dressed in underwhelming sweats.

"Yes. We're going to take him in as soon as possible, before the bleeding gets worse."

"Ok," his wife said quietly, her eyes filling with tears. "Surgery. Ok."

"Mr. Kincaid," Meredith continued, a little louder but still gentle as he seemed to be fighting to stay awake. "There are some risks to the surgery. The bleed is in the area of the brain that controls personality, so the surgery could alter your behaviors and moods. Obviously, we're going to be very careful, but you should be prepared for that possibility."

"Oh my God."

"Kate," Mr. Kincaid soothed, squeezing his wife's hand, eyes still closed. "I'll be fine. You'll do the surgery today?" he asked Meredith, opening his eyes again.

"As soon as we can," she assured him. "The surgery will take a few hours, and recovery should be about four to six weeks. Do you have any questions about the procedure?"

"I'm just going to…I'm going to call my mom to come stay with the kids. They're with our neighbor now," Kate told her Meredith. "But I'll have my mom come stay for a few days."

Meredith nodded. "This is Dr. Marchione. She'll be back very soon to get you ready for surgery, but if you need anything or have any questions before then, you can page me."

Mrs. Kincaid followed Meredith and Dr. Marchione out of the room. "Dr. Grey?"

"Mrs. Kincaid."

"How long should I tell my mother…how long is Rick going to be here?"

"He should be able to go home in a week if there are no complications. But the recovery at home will take a little longer. He won't be able to go back to work for about six weeks."

"Ok," she sighed loudly.

"You have kids?"

"Three," she nodded.

"We're going to take good care of him, Mrs. Kincaid," Meredith assured her.

"Thank you."

As soon as they got out of earshot, Meredith turned to Dr. Marchione. "Get me an OR now, and scrub in. Don't let him fall asleep."

While she waited for an OR to open up, Meredith studied a few other charts of patients from earlier in the week who were still here. She had just hung up the phone with another intern and was about to check on the patient just reported on when Cristina joined her at the nurses' station. She dropped off an armful of charts and held on to another slightly smaller pile. "Schedules," she supplied.

"Hey," Cristina said after she put the schedules down. She said it pointedly, carefully, like she had something to say but wasn't sure yet if she should say it. "Did you…hear from the Chief at all?"

"Did you?" Meredith asked right back. Cristina wouldn't have asked if she hadn't had a similar discussion with the Chief, perhaps moments before her own, right?

"About your fellowship?"

"Yeah," Meredith said.

"You got yours?"

"Yeah."

"Me too."

"Are you taking it?" Meredith asked.

"I don't know."

They had endured so much together since they started as interns—Meredith's push and pull with Derek, and a broken engagement and several other relationships (though none as serious as the one with Burke) for Cristina. So much had changed between them. But Cristina's opinion, and what Cristina did, still mattered very much.

"Yeah," Meredith sighed. "I don't know either."

"It's too early to know about the others," Cristina said matter-of-factly, like the others were all that mattered. She had applied to Mass Gen, Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai…some of the same cities Meredith looked at, but most very different, and she would probably get all of them. She was well on her way to being a cardio god. But Cristina was going to do what Cristina wanted to do, and go to whoever made her the best offer. Meredith felt a slight twinge of jealousy that Cristina's choice would only affect Cristina.

"Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing," Meredith said. She looked down at the chart in front of her for a second, not long enough for anything on it to register, and propped up her head with her elbow.

"Well, what does Derek say?" Cristina asked.

Meredith didn't know when exactly it happened, when Cristina realized that Derek could never be discounted. It wasn't even after she married him, after they committed forever to paper. It was only after Emily was born that Cristina truly accepted that Derek would always matter, that he could never go away. And even when they did go away from each other, Cristina was no longer in the business of trying to make Meredith see that maybe it would be for the best to stay that way.

"I haven't told him yet," Meredith sighed. "He said he would move anywhere I got a job, and I mean, I only applied to programs in pretty big cities. He'd find a job too. But I don't know. And then the baby," she continued, rubbing her temples as she thought about Emily and the idea of potentially moving a then-five-year-old to a totally foreign environment. "I don't know," she finished.

"We don't have to know yet," Cristina offered comfortingly.

"Yeah, thank God."

"Dr. Grey," Dr. Marchione interrupted, rushing up to her and stopping the conversation in its tracks. "OR 3 just opened up. Do you want—"

"Yeah," Meredith replied. She gathered the charts in front of her and put them back. "Let them know we're coming and prep Mr. Kincaid for surgery. I'll be right there. I'll talk to you later?" she asked Cristina, rushing towards the OR without waiting for her to answer.

She caught Derek in the hallway, on her way towards the OR as he walked in the opposite direction. He smiled at her before he said a word, the kind of wide, true smile that she longed for as an assurance that he was ok. It was hard to judge when to ask how he was; sometimes he seemed completely fine and other times, like he could fall apart at any moment. As the months ticked by, he leaned more towards fineness than falling apart, but she couldn't help but feel the need to keep checking on him, even if it was silently. She did know that, rationally, there was little chance that he'd fall apart to the extent that she had several years before. He'd always had himself a little more together than she did. But the looks on his face when he spoke with his mother and sisters on the phone sometimes resonated, and she couldn't help but worry.

"Hey." He stopped, and so did she. She had some time before they got Mr. Kincaid prepped and put under anyway.

"Hi." She grinned as he stepped a little closer, shutting out the traffic and people around them. She'd woken up this morning with his arms wrapped around her, hands on her hip and on her bare stomach where her t-shirt had ridden up. He had woken up smiling, had kissed her and made Emily pancakes before he went to work. She hadn't seen him since they got to the hospital, they came in two separate cars because she had to work late tonight, but relief washed over her as she saw that his smile was still there. Maybe it was because she knew there were only three more chemo treatments and just a little more radiation after that. Maybe it because of something else. But the smile was still there.

"How's your day going?" he asked.

"I,uh, actually talked to the Chief a minute ago," she said, about to try the news on for size for herself, to see how the words felt coming out of her mouth. "He offered me a fellowship at Seattle Grace."

Derek beamed. His hair was still tied back in his scrub cap, and without that to steal focus, his smile seemed so much more apparent. "That's great!"

"Yeah," she replied, trying not to sigh. "Yeah, it is."

He studied her, let a second or two lapse, and then spoke up. He moved to one side of the hallway so people could continue to get by them, and he said knowingly, "Don't feel like you have to take this just because it's the first offer."

"I'm not," she replied, even though she did feel a slight pull to do just that. She never planned out a damn thing before her medical education and career, and half the time, not even then; Derek, Emily—they had been surprises. So when was the time to plan and when was the time to look for a sign or whatever, let life lead her where it may? All she could think about, whenever she thought about it, was the knowledge that nothing was just about her anymore.

"What do you think?" she asked Derek.

"I think," he said as his hand found the same spot on her hip, "that I got to do my fellowship wherever I wanted and you should too."

"That's not helpful," she replied indignantly.

"Freedom, Meredith."

"Yeah, whatever," she mumbled, stifling a grin. "I actually have a craniotomy waiting on me, so I'll see you at home?"

"Yeah. I'm not on the board for the rest of the day. I'll get Emily?"

"Can you? I don't know how long this guy's surgery will take."

"Yeah, I'll talk to you at home," he assured her, and stepped aside to let her continue down the hallway towards the OR. "Oh, wait, Meredith, one more thing," he interjected. She whirled around and they took a few steps towards each other again. "Just so you know," he said in a low, sexy voice, the one he used most often when he was about to take her clothes off. "This is the best hospital on the West Coast but if you decided to stay, don't think that just because you'd be both the best neuro fellow and my wife that you'd be getting special treatment."

She snorted. "Just so you know," she replied. "Don't think that just because you'd be my husband and my boss that you would be getting any special treatment. I'd still tell you when you're out of line."

"Ah," he chuckled. "Looking forward to it, Dr. Grey."

They put Mr. Kincaid under as soon as she got to the OR. Spread on the table, with his shaved head, he looked much more vulnerable, like a completely different man from the one she had just seen in his hospital room.

"Hey, Dr. Grey," he murmured dazedly when he saw her. "Let my wife know what's going on, will you? She gets worried a lot."

"We'll keep her updated," Meredith promised. "But for now, we have to focus on you. I'll see you when you wake up."

He nodded, and the anesthesiologist held the mask over his face, putting him to sleep in seconds. It took a few more minutes for him to be properly intubated, draped, and positioned so Meredith could cut. With Dr. Marchione looking over her shoulder and her surgical team at the ready around the table, Meredith held out her palm. "Ten blade."

She worked quickly but with an attention to detail as she cut and then asked for the drill. She didn't talk much except to ask questions of Dr. Marchione when she had to. The confidence she felt, the idea of taking a scalpel and knowing exactly what to do with it, was something that came to her over time.

Mr. Kincaid's craniotomy was so much like so many other craniotomies she had performed. Head trauma from car accidents often produced similar injuries. These were the surgeries she got as a resident, the routine ones that were unlikely to be complicated, the ones that attendings like Derek didn't really have time for. She liked them because she became good at them. Even now, she didn't have to agonize over each step of the procedure; she just did it.

Her team worked efficiently with her, in near perfect synchronization. Staying here would not be the worst thing; these were good people, she thought. It wasn't that she was afraid to leave, she reasoned to herself silently as she suctioned pooled blood out of the surgical site, looking for the source of the bleeding. It was just that she had to make sure it was right before she left. She didn't blame her mother for wanting to leave all those years ago, but the way she did it changed everything. She took nothing with her and cut everyone out; sometimes, Meredith truly believed that Ellis had only taken her to spite Thatcher.

She knew that this was different, that she was different, if only for the fact that she was thinking about these things at all. But her life now was about raising the daughter her mother didn't raise: a person who felt like she mattered. And she didn't want to choose the wrong thing.

She finally got home a little after eight that evening, fighting traffic until she got to the remote part of the far suburbs, where they and no one else lived. Pulling into the driveway, she gathered up her trash: a cheeseburger wrapper and an empty soda cup, her quick dinner on the way home. The cold air swirled around her and made it hard to hear anything, but as soon as she shut the front door behind her, she heard Emily. He'd kept her awake for her.

"Hey," she said, almost out of breath by the time she finally stopped in the kitchen and dropped her bag to the floor. She didn't even bother to take her coat off yet.

Derek was standing at the sink, still in the dress pants and button-down he'd worn to work that day, loading three days worth of dishes into the dishwasher with his sleeves rolled up. Emily sat on the countertop close to him, playing with two small puppy figurines George bought her from the hospital gift shop the week before for no reason at all. She already had her pajamas on, a matching pink long-sleeved shirt and pants set printed with darker pink horizontal stripes. Her feet were bare, and Meredith could still see the remnants of chipped purple nail polish on her toes, the product of a night a few weeks ago when Derek had been on call. Her hair was slightly damp, but not soaking wet, although the comb lines were still visible.

"Hey," Derek greeted her, turning around with wet, soapy hands. "Did you get my message?"

"Yeah, I just grabbed something on the way home." She threw her trash in the trashcan and kissed him before moving on to Emily. "Hey, Em," Meredith said. She kissed her forehead and Emily looked up from the toys in her hand. "How was your day?" Meredith asked.

"Good," Emily replied, holding out both hands, with a puppy in each one, to Meredith. Lately, she wanted them to see everything she was doing, everything she made, everything she played with. She took them from Emily, looked them over for a second, and passed them back. "Mommy?" Emily beckoned, then let out a deep, bellowing cough that sounded like it started almost in her belly and vibrated through her little body. Emily barely seemed bothered by it at all, and as soon as she was done, after a few softer follow-up coughs, she continued with what she was about to say. "I knowed all my numbers today."

"Good job!" Meredith praised. "Were you coughing like that this morning?"

"No, it's definitely worse since then," Derek replied before Emily could.

"Yeah, it is," she agreed. "Has she been doing that all night?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Em, does your throat hurt?" Meredith asked.

Emily shook her head no, and set her puppies down on the counter beside her. "Mommy?"

"Can I look at your throat?" Meredith asked. "Open your mouth so I can see the inside."

Emily obeyed silently, and Meredith crouched down to inspect the inside of Emily's mouth. Everything looked fine, but the cough was definitely harsher, more intense, since that morning.

"Half the kids in daycare have croup," Derek volunteered. He poured detergent into the dishwasher, and closed the door.

"She catches so much crap there," Meredith mumbled. "Does your throat hurt?" she asked Emily again, rubbing her own throat to demonstrate.

Emily shook her head again. "Mommy?"

"What?"

"Wanna hear me count?" she asked finally.

"Yes," Meredith smiled. "Go."

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen…." She paused, dragging out fourteen into two extremely long syllables while she bought herself time to think.

"Fifteen…," Meredith prompted gently.

"Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!" Emily finished with a flair.

"Good! Do you know any numbers in Spanish?" she asked, knowing already that Emily did.

"Yeah! Uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, seis." She stopped and sucked in a breath, releasing it in a loud, wet cough that rattled her completely. She got the next number out, but then had to cough again before she could continue on to diez.

"Very good!" Meredith said, glancing down at the clock on the oven. "It's bedtime now though, ok? They didn't have the most stable lifestyle, with the long hours that were just part of a surgeon's job description, but they tried to keep Emily on as much of a routine as possible, and it was creeping closer to 8:30.

"You just comed home!" Emily protested indignantly.

"I know, I'm sorry we didn't get more time together tonight. Tomorrow, I'm going to pick you up though. How does that sound?"

Emily sighed, and swung her legs back and forth. She reached for her two puppies again, and bowed her head as she played with them, knocking them together in her hands. She made absolutely no move to get off the counter or acknowledge that it was in fact bedtime.

"Come on," Derek said to Emily. He dried his hands, and then reached for hers. "Want to jump down?" he asked. "Who do you want to read your story?" he prodded, a hand on her back guiding her towards the stairs once her feet were on the ground.

"You one _and_ Mommy one," Emily demanded.

"Ok. Two stories it is."

Meredith took off her coat and laid it over the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen island. She left her bag on the floor, and followed Emily and Derek upstairs.

"Mommy, I colored a butterfly today," Emily announced on her way up. "You can see them tomorrow in the morning."

"Oh, they're hanging up?" Meredith asked. The exhaustion was hitting her now like it always did, at the end of the day as soon as she stopped. She left after Rick Kincaid woke up from surgery, an event that happened a full 12 hours after she arrived that morning. He'd woken up groggy, but aware, with his bleeding resolved. She had left tired, with an ache in her lower back, in the same place as it always came after leaning over an open brain for five hours.

"Yeah, Miss Brenda hanged them up on the wall."

"What's yours look like so I'll know it when I see it?"

"It's all the colors," Emily shrugged, with a quiet gasp and cough as she pushed her bedroom door open. Derek chuckled in agreement; he had seen it earlier when he picked her up from daycare.

"Oh, ok, well I'll look for it in the morning," she promised.

While Derek helped Emily pick the evening's books and get herself into bed, Meredith dug the humidifier out of Emily's closet and filled it up with water. She plugged it in by Emily's bed, and it started to hum as mist rose from the machine.

"Em, don't touch this, ok?" she said, pointing to it. "It's going to help your throat feel better, so you need to not press the buttons."

"You ready for your stories, Bean?" Derek asked, settling on the corner of Emily's bed, by her pillow. He left a little room for Meredith to join them, then he flipped open the first book and started to read.

"I had an amazing surgery today," Meredith told Derek a few hours later, long after Emily had gone to sleep, while she got changed and he brushed his teeth. She shucked her jeans off and tossed them in the hamper in the corner, and pulled a pair of navy sweats out of her dresser.

He poked his head out. "Yeah?"

"Well it was just a craniotomy," she conceded. "But I just felt like…." She paused to think and pulled her sweater over her head. She stood in front of the open bathroom door for a moment in her bra and sweatpants, trying to figure out what it was she wanted to say. Derek spit and rinsed his mouth out, and turned to study her, waiting for her to continue. "I could see myself becoming something," she finally said, and pulled a t-shirt on. "I mean maybe it's just because the Chief offered me that fellowship today," she mused. "But I just felt like I was one step closer to becoming the doctor I want to be."

"Do you want to take it?" he asked. He unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged it off, and draped it over hers on top of the hamper.

"I don't know. I mean, obviously, I can see myself working here, but then I think it might be time to make a change. It's just…things are good now."

"They'd still be good no matter where we went," he assured her.

"You know, I can still remember the day we moved to Boston."

"For your mom's fellowship?"

"Yeah. She told me we were going and it would be better. I thought we were going on vacation."

"It wasn't better," Derek murmured knowingly.

"I mean, eventually it was fine. But leaving changed my whole life."

He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she let her head rest against his bare chest. Her fingertips pressed into his lower back, and he kissed the top of her head. She heard the quiet intake as he smelled her hair, and he promised her, "You'll end up where you're supposed to be."

She used to feel like everything was swirling around her, her work and love and all the other things that defined her, but now she felt like, even though everything else was still moving, he was here and standing still for her. She laughed a little, but held on to him a little tighter. "Since when did you become a 'que sera, sera' kind of guy?"

"I don't know. It's new. With some things."

"Cristina's going to go somewhere else," Meredith whispered, still in his arms a moment later.

"She said that?"

"No," she admitted, staring straight ahead unblinking. "But I can tell."

"What happens if she goes somewhere else?" he asked softly.

Everything changes. I stay, and she goes. Or she stays, and I go. Or we both go. No matter what, there will be upheaval and risk and we can't be the same after it happens. We've been moving in different directions for so long already and I don't know what will happen to us when one of us actually moves.

She sighed. "I don't know."

She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, her elbows locked with Derek's. She would think about everything tomorrow, more about the fellowship and the possibility of another two years at least in Seattle. She'd barely settled in to start getting good sleep when the door to their bedroom swung open and she felt someone tug on her shirt.

"Mommy?" Emily asked in a quiet voice.

Meredith groaned a little, and spoke without opening her eyes. "What do you need?" she whispered.

Emily let out a harsh, bellowing, barking cough, the aftershocks of which went on for a few more seconds. She sucked in a breath and tried to steady her voice. "My throat hurts," she whimpered.

Another fit came quick on the heels of the first, loud enough to make Derek stir and hard enough to make Emily gasp for breath and trigger more coughing at the same time. It took her a few seconds to get on top of it and stop, but she couldn't help but continue to breathe heavily, the force of the air making her vocal cords vibrate hoarsely without words.

Meredith shoved Derek a little and he rolled back towards the far end of the bed. She moved back with him, creating a little space for Emily to crawl into. Emily didn't lie down at all. Instead, she sat on the bed with her legs tucked under her. Meredith rubbed her knee for a moment in an attempt to get her to lie down next to her, but Emily wouldn't move. Instead, she coughed and coughed, forcing gulp after gulp of air back out over her inflamed vocal cords.

"Mommy," she whined, drawing out the last syllable as she started to cry. Meredith didn't know which made the other one worse, the coughing or the crying, but the more Emily cried, the harder she coughed, and all that did was make her cry even harder.

By now, Meredith couldn't have gone back to sleep even if she wanted to. The sound of Emily's alternate wails and hacking coughs filled the entire room. Derek rolled over onto his back and rubbed his eyes as Meredith slung her legs over the side of the bed.

"It's ok," she soothed Emily with a hand on her back. "Come with me. I'll try to make it better, ok?" she whispered.

Meredith pulled a spare blanket off the foot of the bed and opened the door to their bathroom bathroom. Emily loudly followed her, grunting and wheezing with each breath. Though Emily had croup when she was one, for about a week around this time of year, somehow they'd managed to escape it last year and now, when she was old enough to realize what was going on, it seemed entirely new to her.

Emily stood sadly in the bathroom, arms hanging limply at her sides, while Meredith set the blanket down on the tile floor and turned on the shower. She tested the water with her hand, holding it under the steady flow until it got too hot to keep there.

"I'm going in there?" Emily asked tearfully, eyeing the shower as steam started to fill the room.

"No, we're just going to sit in here and let the steam help your throat," Meredith assured her. She sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall, and motioned for Emily to join her. Emily plopped down on top of Meredith, with one leg on either side of her lap and her chest flush against Meredith's own. She laid her head down on Meredith's chest, and Meredith rubbed her back, trying to soothe away the last few spluttering tears that she couldn't shake. "If you stop crying, it won't hurt as much," she promised. "Just try to go back to sleep, ok?" she whispered to the child.

Emily nodded, and rubbed along Meredith's rib cage for a moment or two until she stopped crying outright and resorted to intermittent whimpering punctuated by coughs.

"Hey," Derek whispered as he pushed the door open and joined them on the floor barely two minutes after they sat down. "Hi, Bean."

Emily perked up at the sound of Derek's voice, and opened her eyes. "Did you hear me coughing?" she asked.

"Yeah, I did."

"It's hurting me in my throat but I'm gonna have steam," she whispered hoarsely.

Derek chuckled and kissed her forehead. "I think that'll help."

"Derek, you don't have to," Meredith assured him. She could probably get Emily back to sleep in less than an hour, and there was no sense in both of them losing sleep when in actuality there wasn't much either of them could do. "You should get some sleep."

He shook his head. "Meredith."

"She's all croupy," she said quietly, and smoothed Emily's hair down. Emily felt heavy but still against her, save for the occasional rattling of her chest that came with the coughing.

"Yeah."

"Daddy?" Emily asked quietly, earnestly. "Did you like my butterfly?"

"I loved it."

"Yeah," she murmured, and yawned. "It's hanging up on the wall."

"I know, I saw it today. I think it was one of your best projects, Bean. But no more talking, ok? You need to go back to sleep."

It took awhile for Emily to do so. By the time she did, the steam had filled the bathroom and beads of sweat formed on their foreheads. After awhile, Emily whined that she was hot, but once they stripped her shirt off and covered her with the blanket, she seemed to finally get comfortable and drift off to sleep.

Meredith didn't move. She stayed on the floor with Emily in her lap, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. It was exhausting trying to be everything, trying to bear the weight of responsibility to so many. The hot water had run out, and the steam was dissipating more and more with each passing moment, but she was afraid to move Emily for fear that she'd wake up again. Her coughing had subsided from intermittent to infrequent, and even though the water coming out of the shower was cool now, it would heat up again and more steam would fill the room if they needed it, and besides, the white noise from the rushing water might have been what was keeping her asleep.

"I booked the beach house last night," Derek said out of nowhere.

"Really?" Meredith's eyes flew open and she looked over at him only to find that he was already looking at her.

"Yeah. I called after work," he told her. "I didn't get a chance to tell you today. Last week in July."

She sighed, and nodded slightly, closing her eyes and resting her head back against the wall. Placing her hands back on Emily's back, she rubbed her over the blanket for a second and murmured, "That's good."

The phone rang in their bedroom, a sound muffled by the running water but still audible even behind a closed door. Meredith sincerely hoped that it wasn't one of her patients who needed her to come back in. All-nighters were all too common when she was an intern, but now, she craved sleep almost like a drug. Derek quietly got up to answer the call, while she quickly scrolled through a list of possible complications for Mr. Kincaid as well as a few of her other patients who were still fairly new post-ops. Was it possible that Mr. Kincaid was presenting with another bleed? His head did get rattled around quite a bit in his accident that morning. She sincerely hoped not. Performing a craniotomy right now was the last thing she wanted to do.

The minutes ticked by, and she could hear the sound of Derek talking over the noise of the water, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. He didn't call for her though, so maybe it was one of his patients who needed him and she could get back in bed as soon as he came back to lift Emily off of her. When he came back what felt like an hour later, but was actually probably about twenty minutes, he was dressed in street clothes again.

"Hey," she said, looking up at him from her place on the floor as he stood in the doorway. "Are you going back into work?"

"No. It's, uh…." He sighed, and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. "It's my mom. She ran a fever and Kathleen took her to the hospital a few hours ago. They just got her labs back. Her counts are shot; they're admitting her."

"FNP?" she asked.

"Yeah."

It was a known complication of chemotherapy, the possibility that the drugs could attack so many good cells along with the bad ones that the immune system could be compromised. Febrile neutropenia in someone in their seventies—she could catch anything: pneumonia, the flu, MRSA, anything. They might have to stop her chemo if it was that bad, or at least wait and be forced to deviate from the schedule that up until now had been followed perfectly, giving the cancer a chance to get a leg up.

All the possible complications stemming from FNP rolled through her mind. If the cancer didn't kill her, this could right now. If they didn't get her white blood cell counts up immediately. She didn't know what to say, if she should say any of that, but when she looked at Derek, it didn't matter. He already knew.

The look of fear on his face broke her heart. She had never seen him look like this, not even when they got the diagnosis a few months before. He looked scared then, as he realized all he could possibly lose and all the ways the foundations of his life could be shattered. But he looked terrified now that it might actually happen and that all of his planning and all of his research and preparation had done absolutely nothing to help him deal with it.

"What's her ANC?" Meredith asked, without even wondering if he had asked Kathleen that when she called. Of course he had.

"420."

Shit. No wonder they admitted her.

"Is she hypotensive?"

"I don't know. Damn it, I should have asked that," he replied and his voice started to waver. "I don't think so. But I don't know."

"What was her temp?"

"102.5."

Somehow, it was easier to think like a doctor with something like this. It was easier to pull away, to detach and look at this the way a surgeon would: as a diagnosis. Getting the medical history felt more natural, much safer, than curling up into this reality and feeling the fear that came with knowing that Derek's mother might die and if she did, he would never be the same.

"Oh." It was all she could think to say. The sweat on her brow suddenly felt overwhelming, like it was much hotter in that bathroom than it actually was. This was bad. If she was on call (and an ER resident, but whatever), she would have sent Mary straight up to the ICU.

"Yeah," Derek agreed. "So I'm gonna go out there."

"In the morning?" Meredith asked.

"There's a six-thirty flight."

Derek leaned down and gently scooped Emily into his arms so Meredith could stand up. She picked Emily's discarded shirt up and turned the shower off. Without the constant flow of water in the background anymore, it felt deafeningly quiet in their house.

"What time is it now?" she asked.

"Almost four."

"So you're gonna leave right now?"

"Yeah, I got a ticket," he said, sounding almost robotic as he left the bathroom with their child in his arms. "Do you want her in our bed?"

"Yeah, that's fine." She didn't know if she'd get any sleep now, but at least she could lie there next to Emily and listen to her breathe, make sure she was ok.

Derek laid Emily on his side of the bed. As gently as she could, Meredith perched on the end of the bed and eased the shirt back over Emily's head. She stirred a little at being disturbed, but never woke despite coughing a little when Meredith threaded both of her arms back through her long sleeves. Once she was fully dressed again, Meredith covered her with the blanket and turned to Derek.

He had his drawers open and was throwing some clothes into a bag. He didn't look like he was even thinking about it but was just taking whatever was on the top of the piles no matter what it was. An open laptop rested on top of their dresser, pushing framed 5x7s of them at their wedding and Emily on her first birthday to the side. The webpage Derek was browsing was still up, just a confirmation message from the airline that his purchase had gone through and he could check in for his flight at the airport.

"Do you want me to come out there with you?" she asked.

She could figure something out. She had the fellowship offer, right? They couldn't really take it away because she took a few days off to deal with a family emergency. They could leave Emily here, hopefully, and even if she had to stay with a few different people, they could work it out. If that took another few hours to arrange, she could get the next flight and meet him there. And if not, she could bring Emily with her and between the dozens of people in the Shepherd clan, surely someone would be available to look after her. She could figure it out and make it work if he wanted her there.

"No, it's ok," he said, zipping his bag closed. "Em's sick, she wouldn't be able to see her anyway." He sighed and looked at the sleeping toddler in the bed and then back at Meredith with some guilt in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'll come back as soon as I can. I don't mean to leave you alone."

"No, you should go," she assured him. "We'll be fine."

She got off the bed and wrapped her arms around his waist, knowing there wasn't much she could say or do to make him feel better. When this happened to her, she had woken up and it was already over, and he was right there to tell her. But if this was going to happen to him, he'd be awake and alive and uncertain the whole time.

"I'll call you tomorrow?" she whispered. Her kiss was barely returned, but it took him a moment to break her grasp.

"Yeah, I'll call you when I know something."


	21. I'll drive out and find you

_If you break down, I'll drive out and find you  
_ _If you forget my love, I'll try to remind you  
_ _And stay by you when it don't come easy_

* * *

He didn't get to Connecticut until it was already dark outside. Had he seen the sun today at all? Maybe for a minute or two? Between the six-hour flight and the three-hour time difference, it was nearly dinner time by the time he had landed in Hartford, paid for a rental car, and driven to the hospital.

He tried to sleep on the plane, but rest wouldn't come. He fidgeted for most of the flight, leafed through the magazine he found in the seat pocket in front of him, got up to use the bathroom twice even though he didn't have to go, and was probably the most annoying person the people who shared his row with him had come across in awhile. He couldn't help it; it just seemed like everything was taking forever, that everyone else was moving in slow motion while his brain was in overdrive. The people in front of him couldn't get off the plane fast enough. The girl behind the counter at the rental car place kept asking him stupid questions about what kind of car he wanted until he finally snapped and told her to give him the one closest to the exit. The speed limit seemed entirely too low, and the elevator in the hospital ridiculously backed up.

He found Nancy standing at the vending machine, punching the buttons for a cheap cup of coffee, before he found his mother's room. She had one hand in her hair, her head bowed down in exhaustion, and her back to him.

"Hey," he said, laying a hand gently on her shoulder.

She turned and he saw the utter fatigue, not just from the past 24 hours but from the past six months, etched on her face. Nancy was normally so well put together; she was clamoring to wear makeup when she was nine. But she stood before him now with the hints of dark circles under her eyes, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, and not a stitch of makeup to be seen. "Want some coffee?" she asked as the machine started to spit hers into a paper cup.

He shook his head. "How's Mom?"

She sighed. "They started her on some meds last night, so they're hoping," she paused and looked down at her wrist, but realized she wasn't wearing her watch. "What time is it now?"

"About 5:15."

"Yeah, they're going to check her counts again in a few hours to see where we are."

"No infections though?"

"No, nothing that has presented yet. So we're hoping Kathleen got her here in time."

He wondered how long her time in the ER was. A 71-year-old febrile cancer patient didn't need to be sitting in the emergency room for hours during the tail end of cold and flu season while the hospital processed paperwork and saw other patients. He glanced over and saw an open door, and his mom asleep in bed. Every time one of his sisters called over the past few months with an update, he always asked if they wanted him to come out there, and they always said no, they had everything under control. Last night, when Kathleen called to tell him this, he didn't ask this time; he told her he would be on the next flight out. And she didn't object.

"What do they have her on?" he asked.

"Cefzim."

At this moment, he was thankful that Nancy was here and not Annie or Maggie. He loved them, but they wouldn't be able to answer his questions the way he needed them to be answered.

"Not Vancomycin?" he pressed. Cefzim was good, but they didn't need to softball this.

"He doesn't want to risk her kidney function. She doesn't have an actual infection; her ANC is just really low," Nancy assured him, telling him the only good news he'd heard all day. "So they're just doing the Cefzim as a precaution."

"What about a G-CSF to get her ANC up?"

"Neupogen."

"Ok," he said finally, satisfied that they had handled the situation and the calls made were ones he would have made himself. They had to do something to get her white blood cells up; she couldn't fight infection without them. "She's sleeping now?"

"Yeah, she didn't get much rest last night. She's been napping for about an hour or so."

He nodded, and looked around the waiting room for anybody else, but no one he knew was there. "Where is everybody?"

"Kathleen went home to get some sleep. She told you she was the one staying with Mom after her treatment this week? She'd been up all night. And, uh," she paused, like she had to try to think of who else was in her family. "Anne was here this morning, but Audrey came home sick from school so she had to leave. And Maggie should be here soon; she's running out of leave at work so she is coming after. Oh, hold on," she stopped abruptly and pointed. "That's her doctor. Dr. Farrell. This is my brother Derek."

An older man, probably in his mid-fifties, stopped to shake Derek's hand. He was wearing a lab coat over dress pants and a shirt and tie, and though he was fit, his hair was gray. He shifted the charts he was holding to one arm, and took a firm grip on Derek's hand. "Pleasure to meet you," he said.

"Derek was hoping that you could give him a little more information about what's going on with our mom. He's a doctor too."

"Wow, lots of doctors in this family," Dr. Farrell chuckled. "No wonder you've all been so on top o your mother's care. Well, her chest x-ray, her bloodwork, urine sample—fortunately, everything came back clean, so we're hoping that we caught it early enough that we can reverse the neutropenia relatively quickly with the Neupogen."

"So the antibiotics are strictly precautionary right now?"

Nancy had just said it, but he couldn't help but ask the doctor for himself. Over the past few months, he really didn't have complaints about the care his mother had received, but a part of him still wished that she would have gone to New York to be treated by someone he knew, someone who had worked with him and whose credentials were what he thought they should be. He couldn't shake the thought that somehow it would have been different, better, if she had done that.

"Yes. Her fever hasn't broken yet, but I hope once she's had another dose, it will. We'll do another round of tests tomorrow, and if everything's still negative but she still has a fever, we'll dose her with the Vancomycin. Obviously, if an infection presents, we'll adjust accordingly," he assured Derek.

"What about her chemo?" Derek asked.

"We're going to stop."

There it was. Exactly the thing that he did not want to hear. A quiet 'oh' was all he could get to come out.

"We'll try to resume as soon as we can," the doctor promised, "But as I'm sure you know, an ANC that low—we need to take a break until she can handle the treatments again. I'm confident that we'll be able to finish her chemo."

Derek nodded, and looked over at the room where his mother slept. She was waking up, but the blankets were still pulled up high around her. She rubbed her face with both hands and looked around, then out into the hallway where the three of them stood talking. He made eye contact with her and she smiled weakly.

"You can go in and see her if you like," Dr. Farrell said, and waved to her before turning back to Derek and Nancy. "It was nice meeting you, Dr. Shepherd," he said, and extended his hand for another handshake. "If you have any questions, please page me."

They thanked him and went in to sit with their mother. He took a squirt of antibacterial gel from the bottle next to her bed, and rubbed his hands together before collapsing into an armchair that had been pulled out into a bed. He took one of her hands, and looked her over. She was thin, much thinner than she was when they had come for Christmas. Her head was bare now; he wasn't sure when she stopped bothering with the scarf all the time. He could see some peach fuzz, but for the most part, her hair was very much gone and her lips looked dry and cracked. He wondered if she had mouth sores, if they hurt, if anything hurt, and he tried to take a deep breath and not cry.

"Hey, Mom. How are you feeling?" Nancy asked.

"I'm feeling ok, hon."

"Mom?" Nancy said quietly. "I'm gonna go home for a little bit, make sure the kids eat and everything, but I'll be back in the morning, ok? Derek's here though, and Maggie is coming soon. Der?"

"Yeah?" he asked, turning around in his chair.

"Where are you staying tonight? Do you want to crash on my couch?"

He shrugged, and looked down at the chair he was sitting in, that could be extended enough for someone to sleep on. "I was just going to sleep here."

Mary balked. "No, everybody is getting a good night's rest tonight," she said, as forcefully as she could. "And I'm the only one with a bed here, so I'll be the only one staying here. Derek, you can sleep in your room at home."

"Ok," Nancy sighed. Even at 45 years old, she knew she wasn't going to win this fight. The five of them were trying to take care of her, but she couldn't stop being the caretaker herself. "I'll see you tomorrow, Mom," she said, and blew a kiss.

"Bye, dear." Mary smiled and blew a kiss back.

She turned her head to Derek, and squeezed his hand. Her hand felt fragile in his, and her skin felt hot. He wondered for a moment what her temperature was; then he made himself try not to think about it.

"You know, they're going to fire you if you miss much more work," she said.

"Nah. I'm way too good."

Her eyes looked tired, her hair was gone, she was probably twenty pounds thinner. But if he focused on her smile and tried to blot out the rest, she still looked like his mom.

"Still, you didn't need to rush out here."

"Mom."

Yes I did. You are so sick. You even look sick this time. Of course I came.

She swallowed, and looked at him hard, and something unspoken passed between the two of them. They didn't say anything for a moment, and neither one of them wanted to break their smile first. He wondered if they were going to talk about this, or acknowledge in the slightest way that they were in fact sitting in a hospital room. He hadn't held her hand since he was a small child learning to cross the street, but he was holding it now. He squeezed it, and she wilted a little. They knew.

She sighed, and offered him what smile she could. "How's the baby?"

Ok, so they weren't going to talk about it. She tried to find something happy, something hopeful, and she found Emily. Derek hadn't heard Emily's voice in hours, but when he called Meredith earlier to tell her he landed safely, he got an update. Still croupy, and pissed off that she wasn't invited to visit Nana.

"She's good. A little under the weather right now."

As soon as the words were out, he felt kind of dumb for saying them. Emily would be fine in a few days. She essentially had nothing more than a bad cough. But Mary looked genuinely concerned anyway.

"Oh, what's wrong?"

"She's got croup. She'll be fine. She's a little mad at me right now though because I went to see Nana and didn't bring her."

Mary chuckled heartily. "She told you that?"

"That's what Meredith said earlier."

"How is Meredith?"

He kept talking; it seemed like that's what she wanted him to do. But he didn't let go of her hand. He wanted to say things. Just in case. But he couldn't come up with the words. So he talked about the things that came easier, the things that didn't matter as much.

"She's good too. She's just working a lot. Actually, they just offered her a fellowship at Seattle Grace, so she was excited about that."

"Oh, so you're staying in Seattle then?" Mary asked.

"We don't know yet. She hasn't heard from the other programs she applied to, so we're waiting until then to make a decision."

Was she hoping that they'd move back East? It might be a little too much Shepherd overload for Meredith, but knowing his family, they probably were hoping for exactly that. They'd have to wait, though, and see how the other programs would respond to Meredith. She'd probably have her pick, and they'd make the decision together, weighing the options at the kitchen table in a few months.

He shook his head a little. Why the fuck was he thinking about the fellowship when he wasn't sure how he would get through this week? Why was he wasting time thinking about things that were not pressing, were barely important at all right now? "How are you feeling, Mom?" he asked.

"I'm fine, hon," she assured him, adjusting her position on the bed a little. "Just a little tired."

"I can let you sleep," he offered hurriedly. Were they too loud before, when they were talking in the hallway? They probably woke her up, and now he was keeping her awake when all she really needed was to rest.

"No, no. I am happy to see you, even though you really didn't need to come out."

He gave her a look. "Yeah, I did."

They waited a moment, and he let go of her hand. The guilt he'd been fighting for months swelled up inside him: those first few years in Seattle where he intentionally stayed away, not wanting his family to call him on how out of control his life was; staying so far away, even though they had to for work and couldn't visit often for the same reason; not giving Emily as much time with her relatives as his nieces and nephews got; not being there to help his family through this every step of the way; only being able to come now, when it was critical. It bubbled up inside him, and the words started to come out.

"Mom? I'm sorry I didn't call and visit more. After Addison, especially. I was wrong to do that."

"You were figuring things out. Trying to find your way," she said quietly, knowingly, and patted his hand. "It's all right, Derek."

"No, I should have been better," he said. Maybe she could let him off the hook, but he couldn't let himself off the hook. "We could have visited more. I could have been around more. I'm sorry about that."

Her grin was weak, but it was there. She knew him so well. "Derek?" she soothed. "Stop talking to me like I'm dying, ok?"

She said the word 'dying.' Everybody was thinking it; it was the unspoken thing between him and Nancy before, and the two of them now. But she'd actually said it. And he felt like he'd been sucker-punched. He took a deep breath, but before he could figure out what to say and summon the strength to make the right words come out, she stopped him.

"I don't want you to feel like there's more you could have done, or more you should have done," she said. _I know my boy and I know you're thinking it._ "You are a wonderful son. It's been a privilege to be your mom." She grabbed for his hand, and continued. ""I love you, Derek. Think about how much you love Emily. I love you that much."

Why was she telling him this? He knew it, but why was she saying it out loud? He'd never doubted it his entire life, that he and his sisters were first with her. They always said the cursory 'love you's' before bed and things like that, but they'd never been the type of family for big heartfelt displays. He still knew, though. And he didn't realize how lucky he was to just know something like that until he met a girl who, even years after her mother passed, thought her mom probably loved her but was never certain.

"I see so much of Dad in you," Mary said. Her voice wavered for a moment, and her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back and corrected the tremor immediately before she kept talking. "I know you probably don't remember, but he talked to you the same way you talk to Emily. He used to make you guys pancakes on Saturdays. Do you remember that?"

"On schooldays sometimes too," Derek murmured.

After over thirty years, it upset him to think about it, but his father had become almost an abstraction. He knew his picture, but it was harder to conjure his face on his own. It was blurry, a familiar voice that he'd never forget coming from a face whose details had slipped away. He remembered his dad's 1962 Yankees World Series ring, the one he wore on his right ring finger every day until he died and was now sitting in a small box in Derek's top drawer. He remembered the red and black flannel shirt that his father wore a lot; the five of them had quietly stolen it from each other's beds for three years after he died, until the fabric had all but disintegrated. He remembered the pancakes he used to make that he had never been able to recreate for his own child. But the man himself was so hard to bring to mind. No matter how hard he tried, he could only get bits and pieces, little details of a life, and very rarely the whole man.

"You're right, he did," Mary agreed. "Used to drive me crazy because I could never get you out the door on time on those mornings. And he never let you guys go to bed without saying goodnight first. You know, he loved your sisters so much, but he had such big dreams for you. I wish he could have seen you grow up. He'd be beside himself proud of you."

As a child, a part of Derek always thought that any sane parent would have preferred Mark to him. He couldn't understand why Mark's own parents were so disinterested. Mark wasn't skinny or scrawny. He was good at sports. He had more friends. Derek was ok, but Mark was really the cooler one and the better one. As a ten-year-old, it seemed so dumb to Derek, the way his dad thought the sun rose and set on him.

"I wish Emily could have known him. And Meredith."

"Oh, God, he would have loved her," Mary sighed. She had a dreamy look in her eye for a minute, like she too was picturing Jack as an old man, with her, surrounded by their family with the littlest ones, Emily and Annie's Ian, in his arms.

"Which?" Derek asked.

"Well, both. He would have loved Meredith. But Emily, she would have had him wrapped around her finger from the day she was born. All of them would have. I would have had sixteen spoiled rotten grandchildren."

Derek laughed a little at that, but then grew quiet. What was going to happen if she died? He'd thought about it a million times, over and over again, since he learned her diagnosis. But what would it be like? How much and how long would it hurt? Could he be here when it happened? If it happened, he corrected himself. He could still hold out for if. Could he say the things he wanted to say, and stop himself from feeling for the rest of his life that their relationship was cut off and unfinished? He wouldn't have to leave it at a 'see ya' on his way out the door, or come home from a normal day at work to find out that she was already gone. His eyes filled with tears, and he stared at her, but said nothing.

"Derek," she soothed. "It's not like Dad." His tears spilled over: ugly, splotchy, droplets running down his face—how did she know?—and she kept talking. "If this is happening, it's not going to be like Dad, I promise you. I will not leave you without saying goodbye. I can't promise you much, but I will promise you that."

"But I don't want you to die." He sounded almost like Emily in that moment—like a scared, clinging child with a helplessly wavering voice. He hated that they were having this conversation at all.

"I don't want to die either. And I'm going to try really hard not to," she replied. Her voice wavered again, but it didn't break. "But I don't want you to be scared for me. My life has been so good. I've got five intelligent, compassionate, wonderful kids. And you've all given me sixteen beautiful grandchildren. I've got a lot more than most. Can I tell you something though?" she asked, and patted his hand. "Just a little advice from somebody who's been around the block a few times?"

How did she have it together? Well, mostly together? Especially when he felt like he was going to break down or vomit or explode from feeling so out of control.

"Yeah, Mom." He tried to steady his voice before he asked, "What is it?"

Mary didn't talk for what felt like a long time, at least a minute or two, and he just waited while she tried to find the words. She looked around the room, out the window for a moment, then at the wall for a moment more until she finally got back to his face. She studied him for a while, and when she started talking, the words poured out.

"I don't want you to be afraid. Not of failing, not of pain, not of anything. You or the girls. If you hurt, it's because you loved first. And I'd rather have you have that, than close yourself off to anything because you're afraid."

He nodded, wondering if she had this conversation with the girls. Maybe she did, and said different things. Or maybe it was the same talk for all five of them. Maybe he was the only one. He felt nauseous to think that they were having a potential farewell conversation, absolutely sick with it, but he tried his best to listen to her.

"Derek, I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if I knew before we got married that I was only going to get fifteen years with Dad, I would have married him anyway. Because trying is better than not, and if you can't have it all, some is still good. So I want you to promise me that you'll try not to be afraid."

"Ok," he said, though he wasn't quite sure how he would keep that promise. "I'll try, Mom."

Why was she talking about Dad so much? She made sure that he would never disappear from their lives, and talked about him often. All of his nieces and nephews called him 'Pop,' even though they were all years from being born when he died. On special occasions, like a graduation or a wedding or a new baby, someone would usually say that they wished he were there. He was still a presence in their home. But it was an unspoken thing for the most part. The way she was talking about him now was more than he could remember in years—less funny anecdotes, more yearning.

He wasn't sure how to go back to a normal visit after that. She looked tired, like she said all she wanted to say, but it wasn't like he could just turn on the television after something like that and go back to normal small talk. The silence felt heavy, and he felt like he should tell her about everything in his life, anything that came to mind that could possibly be important.

"Dad and I. We fought a lot when you were about four or five. I bet you don't remember that." She looked straight ahead when she said that, not at him at all the way she had before.

He searched his brain, but he couldn't remember anything of the sort. Granted it was almost forty years ago, but any yelling, fighting, even heated conversations—nothing specific came to mind. Nothing even remotely like the knock-down, drag-out screaming matches that Meredith remembered happening in her house crossed his mind whatsoever.

"No, I don't," he finally replied.

"Money was so tight," she sighed. "Dad's business was down. And Annie was only a baby. I was so tired and stressed out. I was just waiting for everything to collapse from under us. And everything Dad did set me off. And I guess I was the same way for him."

"I didn't know," he said simply.

"We didn't want you to. We saved most of our fighting until we had you guys in bed. Maggie heard us once—I think she had a nightmare one night and she came into our room—but I don't think she remembers it. Kathleen and Nancy—I know they were a little older, but I hope they don't know."

"Then why are you telling me this, Mom?" he asked.

As much as he hated how she was talking to him before, he didn't like this at all. He remembered his home as not perfect, but pretty close. It was secure, and so was he because he knew his parents loved him, and loved each other. And if he was being honest, it kind of freaked him out that his life could have been very different.

"Because I see me in you," she replied. "You are your dad. You really are. You two look just alike; your personalities; everything. It's actually a little unnerving at times." She smiled a bit at that. "But I see a little part of me in you, and I just wanted to tell you that. I know you want to feel safe and in control. But it doesn't always work like that. You can't always know. And sometimes there's nothing you can do. I wish I could have figured that out then. Maybe it would have saved your dad and me a lot of pain."

"Did you guys almost break up?" he asked. He couldn't help but wonder, even though it felt almost perverse to ask, like it was none of his business.

"I think we probably would have. If situations had been different, and we didn't need each other so much, we probably would have. But we had the five of you, and your dad's business and everything else. So we stayed together, and eventually it got better. We got through it, and we remembered how much we loved each other."

He didn't know what to say. It was so strange to think that his parents had problems, that they weren't the perfect couple and the perfect family that everyone, including he, had always thought they were. He felt kind of childish thinking so, but it was weird to think of his parents as people with such complicated feelings and problems and heartaches, and it rocked him to think that what he always believed, that his mom never felt any pain until his father died, was wrong.

He was still quiet when she kept going for him. "I wish you wouldn't stand so still so you can try not to break. It's no way to live. You don't know when things will change, if bad things will happen, and trying to make them not happen is not necessarily going to help. I don't want that kind of life for you, Derek. I just want you to be ok."

She shrugged a bit, like she couldn't believe it had taken so much explanation to get to those last few words, and she finally let a few tears roll down her cheeks.

"Mom?" he murmured. He squared his shoulders and smiled weakly at her. "Stop talking to me like you're dying, ok?"

The conversation got a little easier after that, like they both decided together that that was enough for now, and they could talk about something else instead. Not long after, a nurse brought her dinner. She picked at the tray for awhile, and when Maggie arrived, bringing get well soon cards from her kids, she ate a little more once Derek had someone to back him up on the benefits of eating. The three of them made small talk for a few hours, discussing the colleges that their oldest nephew, Kathleen's son Jeremy, had gotten accepted to and which would be best for him to attend. They talked about Maggie's three sons, especially her middle boy Kyle, who had broken his arm sledding a few weeks before. They talked about Emily, and moving her to preschool in a few months. And they made it a point not to talk anymore about how afraid they were, even when the nurse came in to take more blood for some follow-up tests.

By nine o'clock, Maggie apologized, but she had to leave. Her husband Paul, she said, if left to his own devices, would probably let the boys stay up until she got home rather than fight them on going to bed without seeing Mommy first. Mary brushed her off, and told her to go, she would see her in the morning.

He waited alone in his mother's room for awhile, while an intern came to take her to x-ray to get another look at her chest and make sure there was still no infection. He looked around the room, and it felt bare. No flowers in vases; nobody had thought to do that yet. Only the three cards from Ben, Kyle, and Will. He wished Emily were close by. She would have given Mary the butterfly she made at daycare the other day. Was it too late to call her? He could probably catch her before she went to bed. He took out his cell phone and tried calling the house, but no one answered, and he felt a little silly leaving a message so he just hung up. When he called Meredith's phone next, it went straight to voicemail.

They brought his mother back after about forty-five minutes, accompanied by the on-call resident, who let them both know that the chest x-ray was clear again, but they'd do another in the morning. A nurse helped her get comfortable in bed again, pulled the blankets up over her, and took her temperature and other vitals.

"101.4," she murmured aloud, and wrote it down on her chart. "That's better," she said, looking up at them.

Derek nodded, and the nurse left, promising to come back in an hour with some medicine, and to page if they needed anything.

"Mom, why don't you try to get some sleep?" Derek suggested.

"I'm ok," she replied. "Really, it's just nice to sit with you."

"Ok. Do you need anything?"

She shook her head. "I'm fine. Really, Derek."

"Some TV, then?" he asked, and when she nodded, he reached for the remote on the table next to her bed.

He turned on the television and flipped through the limited channel selection for a minute until he settled on some schmaltzy hospital drama that his mother liked. Mary dozed a little in the middle of the show, but was awake again, though a little more tired-looking, by the end. He was about to suggest that they turn off the television and go to sleep when he heard a familiar voice in the hallway.

She looked a little flustered, a lot tired, but she was there, talking to the charge nurse at the nurses' station. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she had a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Her jeans were wrinkled, and she was still wearing her winter coat. But she was there.

"I'm looking for Mary Shepherd," she said. He couldn't hear what the nurse was saying in return, but she quickly replied, "Dr. Meredith Grey," and then clarified, "No, no, I'm not her doctor; she's my mother-in-law."

Mary smiled weakly and waved Derek out of the room. He got up and poked his head out, and called for her before stepping all the way out.

"Hey," she said, relieved when she saw him. Her shoulders sunk and her bag slid down her arm. They met in the middle. He pulled her into his arms, not realizing how much he missed her until he was there holding her.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I didn't want you to be alone," she replied quietly, simply.

He looked around but saw no one else with her. "Where's Emily?"

"She's with Mark."

Derek said nothing, while thoughts of his child staying the night at Mark's apartment ran through his mind. Mark knew absolutely nothing about taking care of a child. He pictured Emily hanging out with him, eating junk, staying up way too late, going to daycare the next day in what she wore the day before. Truth be told, if that's what was happening, she was probably having a great time. It wasn't that he didn't trust Mark, but nobody ever saw Mark Sloan and thought 'he's probably great with kids.'

It was like Meredith could read his mind, because she barely let a few seconds pass before she said, "He wanted to help. And he wasn't sure if he should come out here or not. But he offered to watch Emily for a few days." She shrugged. "And his girlfriend is there, she seems good with kids."

"Oh God."

He had to give Mark a little credit; he'd been with the same girl for almost a year, the longest relationship of his life. Besides possibly Addison, but he certainly wasn't going to go there right now. But a new series of worries scrolled through his head. He pictured Emily finding one of this woman's bras or something lying around the apartment, or Mark forgetting Emily was there and leaving the door open while they….

"She'll be fine," Meredith interrupted his thought process. "He said he could bring her out here if you wanted her. He said just let him know," she soothed.

"Ok," he conceded reluctantly.

"I talked to her in the cab on the way here. Seriously, she's ok."

"Ok," he said again, a little more genuinely this time.

"How's your mom?" she asked.

"She's ok," he sighed quietly, and glanced back towards her room. "They're stopping chemo for now though. There's no infection, but she's still febrile. They're supposed to dose her with Cefzim again in probably about twenty minutes."

"What's she getting for her ANC?" she asked.

"Neupogen."

Meredith nodded. "That's good."

"Yeah. Her temp _is_ down from what it was when she came in. And her chest x-rays have been clear."

Meredith smiled in a relieved sort of way, like the news was better than she thought it was going to be, and rubbed his arm. "Can I pop in and say hi?"

"Yeah," he replied, a little taken aback with Meredith voluntarily offering to sit with his mother and not appearing at all nervous about it. "I'm going to go check on her meds. I'll be right back."

After a brief conversation with one of the nurses on the floor, and a quick bathroom break where he took an extra minute to splash some cold water on his face, he returned to his mother's room to find Meredith sitting in his seat next to the bed, engrossed in conversation with his mother, even laughing a little. What could there possibly be to laugh about?

"Hey." He laid a hand on Meredith's shoulder. She turned to face him, and he was stunned to see that her eyes were watering, brimming with tears that hadn't spilled over. What did they talk about?

"The nurse said she'd be in in a few minutes with your medicine, Mom," he said, feeling a bit like he had just missed out on something.

Meredith stood up and stretched a little. "I've been told I'm supposed to take you home," she said.

Immediately, he stopped looking at Meredith and shifted to look at his mother. "Mom," he protested. "I can stay."

"Derek," she said in the no-nonsense tone he knew very well. "As soon as I get this medicine, I'm going to sleep, so I probably will not be that interesting." She stopped, and smiled at him. "I would love it for you to come back in the morning, but you should get some rest. Both of you."

"Ok," he murmured hesitantly. Truth be told, he was pretty exhausted. "You're sure?"

"Absolutely," she said, practically shooing them out the door. "I'll see you in the morning."

The ride back to his childhood home in his rental car was a quiet one. He couldn't think of what to say, and wasn't up for making small talk. So he just drove and drove, and kept his thoughts to himself.

His mother's usually ordered home was uncharacteristically cluttered, with rumpled blankets on the couch and half-empty glasses of water and orange juice on the coffee table. He dropped their bags on the living room floor and just stood there and looked around for a minute. He felt a little selfish for thinking so, but he was glad he hadn't been in Kathleen's position, the one to discover this complication.

Meredith disappeared into the kitchen, and he heard her rummaging through the cabinets and opening the refrigerator. Had he eaten today? Maybe the bag of pretzels on the plane at least? He couldn't remember for sure. He sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands, and suddenly, he was so tired.

Meredith sat down next to him. "There's no alcohol," she said simply. "I checked."

He nodded, and felt her hand on his back, rubbing gentle slow circles. He knew she was trying to make him feel better, but he didn't think anything was going to work. He wanted to do something; he wasn't sure what, but there had to be _something_ that he was capable of doing. The enormity of his inability to act raked over him, pinned him to the couch. The phone rang, but he made no move to answer it, and after three rings, Meredith finally reached over and did.

"Hello?" It's Nancy, she mouthed. "Yeah, I got here a few hours ago.—No, he's, uh, showering.—Yeah, he had a long day." Derek stared straight ahead and she kept talking, doing what he was supposed to be doing and talking to his sister for him, filling his family in on what they needed to know about their mother.

When she hung up, she looked at him and smiled. "Let's go to bed," she suggested.

Upstairs, they changed into sweatpants, brushed their teeth, and crawled into bed silently. He wrapped his arms around Meredith. Even though he told her it wasn't necessary that she come, he was glad she did. He wouldn't have wanted to sleep here alone, and she felt so good next to him. Some time passed, and even though he wasn't sure if she was still awake, he asked her quietly, "What did you and my mom talk about?"

"You," she whispered.

She didn't ask what he and his mother had talked about. She just stayed there with him, squeezed his hand under the covers, and let him hold on to her like she was the buoy to hold on to when he was drowning.

She turned until they were both on their sides, facing each other, and he kissed her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered, the only thing he could hold on to. And she kissed back: a comforting, earnest sort of wanting that let him know that even though he was the one needing her right now, this was all just part of it. This thing, between them—nobody was leaving.

He pulled her shirt off; she did the same for him. Their pants followed, and he held her there for a minute, pressing his skin to hers. He kissed her shoulders and down to her chest, feeling her hot breath on his neck. She was there with him, clutching his right hamstring, stroking him over his boxers and then in, grabbing his ass and pulling him closer, moaning when his hands pushed up under her breasts and then dipped down into her panties. He shucked off his boxers, and then her panties, in the frenzied, needing way he always did when they did this at work and had to worry about getting caught.

"Derek," she gasped, when he stroked her just the way she liked and then pushed two fingers inside of her. He kissed her, rubbed her just a little, and when he finally rolled on top of her and pushed into her, they both sighed.

He thrust slowly at first, knowing that in his haste he hadn't made much time for foreplay. She kissed him hard, and grabbed at his hair, traced her fingers down the small of his back. She moaned quietly the way she always did, the pleasure caught in her throat, but he didn't make a sound.

He pulled her into a sitting position, and she closed her eyes for a moment, sighing loudly as she sunk down a little deeper. He held her like that for he didn't know how long, and let his hands roam everywhere. He ran them through her hair, down her shoulders until he cupped her breasts. He didn't move much, only thrust a few easy times, but it wasn't about trying to hold out or trying to get her to come first. It just felt good to have her close.

Meredith kissed him and kissed him, cupping his face with her hands, and though her lips didn't say a word, her eyes said I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. She never said it was ok, she never said not to worry, but she was there. And that had to count for something.

She let out her breath in little sighs, the warmth of it drifting by his ear, and moaned eagerly, clutched him that much harder, when he rubbed her in the space between them.

"Derek," she said again, this time in a more yearning way, in a way that let him know that she absolutely craved him. Finish me.

He laid her back down on the bed, and thrust hard and fast into her. She groaned at the unexpected hurriedness of his motions, grew louder when his thumb found her clit and pressed down, and he couldn't help but grunt a little when he buried his face into the crook of her neck and came. Another few seconds of rubbing just the right way, and she finished too, with her hands on his back, pushing him further into her.

They didn't bother to put their clothes back on afterward, and when they curled up into their normal sleeping positions, with his body spooning hers, she fell asleep within minutes. He stayed up a little longer, looking around his childhood bedroom. This room hadn't seen much sex when he was in high school and still lived here. Ok, it hadn't seen any sex when he was in high school. Don't forget to wash these sheets in the morning, he repeated three times in his head.

He breathed in the scent of her hair, which smelled like a different sort of flower since they had discontinued the conditioner he liked so much a few years ago, and shifted a little in her arms. He thought about calling the hospital, just to make sure that everything was ok and that it was all right to wait until morning to go back. While he waited for sleep, he went over the complications that arose from, the treatment protocols for, and whatever else he could remember about FNP. When he shifted again, Meredith grabbed at his hand, and pulled his arm around her waist.

"Derek," she whispered groggily, "Sleep." It took a few more minutes, but he finally did.

When the phone rang in the middle of the night, he couldn't decide whether he should rush to answer it, or if he should just let it ring, but when he finally got up and answered his phone, he heard Kathleen's voice on the line.

"Derek," she said. Why was she whispering? "I just thought you would want to know." She paused, and he waited, and in the silence, a glimmer of hope slipped in. "Her fever just broke."


	22. You have the faith that kills the fear

_You put your fingers in my hair,  
You broke into my head,  
You sacrificed so you could feel like I do.  
You see the day swallow me whole,  
You see me bang my head off walls,  
You put your face on mine and say, "Let it be."  
You said that everyone gets lost,  
You pressed your mouth against my lips,  
You sing a song but there's no strategy  
In your melody, love.  
You have the faith that kills the fear._

* * *

By the time they made it back to the airport for a flight back to Seattle four days later, Meredith wasn't sure how she was still standing upright. She was confident in her ability to bear Derek's weight and carry him through this, but his four equally freaked out sisters added layers of complexity to the situation.

She had learned a lot over the past few days. That almost everyone in Derek's family took their coffee with cream but no sugar. That Paul was Derek's funniest brother-in-law but that Jerry was the one who knew best how to break the tension when things got hard, and maybe that was because Jerry had grown up around the corner from the Shepherds and had been with Kathleen since they were sixteen. On the second day, she and Annie's husband learned that the easiest way to feed sixteen kids at once was to order pizza. By the third day, she learned that Derek could still be functional despite staying awake for practically days on end. And she learned that hospitals are boring when you don't work there, and exhausting and terrifying when all you could do was sit there and wait for news.

Mary started to turn around after a day and a half on antibiotics and G-CSF drugs, and after a few days, her health was still fragile and tenuous, but her counts were climbing. It was almost like she asked the doctors to let her know when she was no longer as critical as she was, because she told Derek that same day that she loved him, but it was ok to go home if he needed to. He fought her on it for a day or so, told his mother and sisters and Meredith that he didn't care about work and he could go back whenever. Mary, in what Meredith had to admit was a brilliant strategic move, countered that Emily needed her father. Meredith had stayed out of the discussion entirely, willing to do whatever Derek wanted to do and stay as long as he wanted or his family needed him to, but after a few days, despite her constant reassurances to Derek that she was fine, she was starting to feel like she should relieve Mark of parenting duties.

They booked this late evening flight, the only one they could get, yesterday. Mary hadn't been discharged yet, but her team of doctors assured them all that, barring some unpredictable complication, she would be within a few days. Sitting at the gate, Derek looked absolutely exhausted, like everything had finally caught up with him. He was awake, but not focused, like he had just spent several nights in a row on-call. Meredith's entire body felt like it had just spent days in a vice. She consciously tried to relax her shoulders, realizing then that she had probably been clenching since they got here. She stretched forward, folding her hands and extending her arms in front of her, feeling the relief spread across the muscles of her back.

She stood up and checked her watch. They still had a little time before they had to board. "I'm going to get some coffee," she said. "Do you want anything?"

Derek looked up at her, gave her a tired sort of smile. He could barely do eye contact a few days ago; now he was smiling again. It felt good, and she couldn't help but smile back. He shrugged, and shook his head. "I'm good," he replied.

Because they booked their tickets so late, they had to sit in the back of the plane, but at least they'd gotten a pair of seats together. Derek settled into the window seat, and Meredith reached for her magazine. She leafed through a few pages, but didn't absorb much. She felt the engine of the plane switch on and rumble below them, and she looked over at Derek, who hadn't looked at his paper at all.

"It's ok," he breathed in quiet relief, as the plane backed out of the gate.

"Yeah," she sighed, and when she reached for his hand, he squeezed back. "It is."

When the flight attendant announced that the use of electronic devices was now permitted, Meredith turned to ask Derek if he wanted his iPod, but when she looked over at him, she saw that he was finally sleep.

It was almost midnight in Seattle when they finally got home. Derek had slept the entire flight, and had gotten his second wind, but Meredith was just putting one foot in front of the other. Upstairs in their bedroom, Meredith sat cross-legged on the bed with her laptop in front of her while Derek unpacked their bags, tossing all their dirty clothes into their hamper. They had spoken to Mark earlier that day, and agreed that the easiest thing to do would be to meet tomorrow at the hospital, so they had the house to themselves that night. Normally, Meredith would want to take advantage of such a rarity, but today, sex was the last thing on her mind.

"You're working tomorrow night?" Derek asked as he lined up all their toiletries on their bathroom counter.

"I feel like I'm on-call practically every day for the foreseeable future," she said dryly, looking up briefly from her email. It was crazy how it could pile up after just a few days away.

Derek chuckled sympathetically, and dropped their empty bags on the floor by the bathroom door. "Residency," he shrugged, and grabbed their dirty clothes.

"Yeah," she sighed. "Extra practice for the boards, I guess."

Holding the hamper with one hand, he leaned over her and rubbed her shoulder with his free hand. "I don't know what I would have done without you there," he murmured with such gratitude in his voice. "I love you."

He kissed the top of her head, and she looked up at him and smiled. As tired as she was now, she could have kept doing it, would have stayed as long as he needed. She would rather have this than the alternative and it made her more nervous than she'd ever tell Derek to know how close they had come.

She turned back to her computer and, a few minutes later, heard the hum of their washing machine. Shit, she muttered to herself before she could close her computer. They needed to go grocery shopping before they even left for Connecticut; they barely had enough to scrape together a lunch for Emily for tomorrow, much less dinner.

Like he read her mind, Derek came back into the bedroom and said "Take-out tomorrow?"

"Whatever you want," she replied.

"We'll bring some back to the hospital for you," he said. "Think about what you want. I'm going to shower."

He shut the bathroom door behind him, and soon, she heard the water running. She closed the lid of her computer, and opened Derek's top drawer. She stripped off her clothes—probably should have done this earlier so he could have washed these too, she thought—and slipped one of Derek's t-shirts over her head. She ducked into the bathroom and quickly brushed her teeth. She felt the ache in her bones start to dissipate as she sank into bed, but sleep didn't come right away. Sometimes it happened this way, that she was so tired that she couldn't let herself finally give in to it.

A few minutes later, she heard Derek turn the shower off. She turned over and laid flat on her back. Why was she still awake? She reached over and turned Derek's bedside lamp off. He could just root around in the dark and deal with it.

Closing her eyes again, she tried to think about how good sleep would feel when it finally came. The bathroom door clicked open, and light and leftover steam flooded the room. "Meredith?"

Ok, seriously, if he didn't shut up, there was a chance she could muster up her last reserve of energy and use it to murder him. She propped herself up on her elbows, and shot him a death stare. Six hours. That's all the sleep she was going to get before she had to work a double shift. "Yeah?"

He stood in the doorway with a towel around his waist, and held up a small plastic casing covered in foil. "Can we get rid of this?" he asked, so nonchalantly that it could have been a bit of trash leftover from the flight home.

Sure, Derek, she thought. Whatever. She squinted in the low light, and when she looked at it again, screwed up her face in confusion. He was showing her her birth control, half punched-out lines of pills that had once been a silent bone of contention between them and now was still silent, though no longer contentious. It was a topic he'd taken off the table. She still thought about it, more and more as she watched Emily get older, but she never said anything. She thought Derek might freak out if she brought it up. She knew Cristina would roll her eyes and ask her why she'd want to do the baby thing again, and Izzie would clap excitedly and want to discuss names and nursery themes before she was even pregnant. So she kept it to herself. Until now, apparently, when Derek suddenly put it back on the table well after midnight just after a cross-country flight. Did he even know what he was saying?

She laid there dumbfounded, at a complete loss for words, until she simply blurted out, "What?"

"Do you think we can throw this out now?" he asked again. He was so calm the way he said it, like they'd been actively discussing this for weeks and this part was just a formality. He smiled at her, and she caught the complexity of it even in the darkness, and when he simply shrugged his shoulders, she melted. _Please still want this_ , the look on his face seemed to say.

Still shocked, even a little dazed, she let it slip out, the answer she felt and nothing more. "Ok."

"Ok," he repeated. He tossed the pills back onto the counter, quickly changed, and crawled into bed next to her, but said nothing else. For a second, Meredith thought that she had hallucinated the entire thing, but Derek's gentle touch brought her back to reality. He wrapped his arms around her, and for him, a deep sleep came within minutes. She stared into the darkness for awhile, feeling the warmth of his skin against hers and his breath drifting gently past her ears, stunned at what she had apparently just agreed to. She was sort of expecting something bigger, an actual discussion at least, when this finally came back up. This was way too easy; it had taken all of thirty seconds to change her life. It was simple, uncomplicated, and apparently the first decision they had ever made together that had been so. She kept fighting sleep, dissecting the few sentences they had just spoken, but when his lips pressed gently onto her shoulder, she finally gave in, and slipped into a deep, hazy sleep.

When they arrived back at the hospital the next morning, they had already been awake for two hours and Derek had said absolutely nothing about what happened the night before. All she could discern was that he was more cheerful than usual, and actually seemed rested despite the lack of sleep.

She saw Emily and Mark sitting together on the plush chairs in the lobby. Mark, wearing the black leather jacket she rarely saw him without, had his back towards her, but Emily knelt on the chair next to Mark's. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, tied with a pink ribbon that Meredith had never seen before. Her clothes had probably been through the wash; she was wearing the same jeans and hoodie that Meredith had left her in a few days ago. Emily was chatting with Mark, but soon caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of her eye. Her face lit up and, too excited to speak, she scrambled off her chair and ran towards them.

Though Meredith tried to downplay it as much as she could, Emily knew that something was not right when Meredith told her that Mark was going to pick her up at the end of the day and she was going to hang out with him for a little while. She never spent so much as an afternoon alone with Mark. When Emily asked why, Meredith told her that she was going to see Daddy and Nana, but instead of asking why she couldn't go too, Emily just said ok. She was quiet for the rest of the ride to the hospital that morning, but just as they pulled into the parking lot, Emily asked nervously, "Is Daddy ok?" Meredith promised that he was fine, but she couldn't tell Emily for sure when they would be back. During her phone calls back home to check in, Emily kept asking if Daddy was ok, and though Meredith and Mark kept constantly reassuring her that he was, Meredith could tell that she didn't believe them.

She ran towards them now, ignoring Meredith almost entirely, and leapt into Derek's outstretched arms. He drew her up into his arms and held her there for a few seconds like she was all that mattered in the world. He hadn't spoken to her as much as Meredith had while they were gone. Odd hours and broken voices made it harder to talk to a little girl who was barely more than a baby. Emily laid her head down on Derek's shoulder, the energy and chattiness of a few moments before on hold, and Derek rubbed her back and kissed the top of her head.

"I missed you, Bean," he said quietly.

"Are you better?" Emily asked, as though he was the one who had been sick.

"Yeah, I'm ok," he assured her, and kissed her again.

"How's your mom?" Mark asked, once Emily had lifted her head and Derek shifted her weight to his hip.

"Out of the woods for now."

"Good," Mark sighed, with his own personal relief in his eyes. "That's great, man."

"Yeah," Derek agreed, and nodded towards Emily. "And I see the two of you survived."

Mark laughed, still holding Emily's pink backpack in his hand. "We made it. Right, buddy?"

For all of her assurances to Derek that Mark could handle a few days with a kid, and that it might even be good for him, Meredith could at least admit to herself that Mark was a choice she made out of desperation more than anything else. When all your friends were surgical residents who were getting ready for the boards and starting to leverage fellowship offers, long-term babysitting was hard to come by. So she settled on Mark, who agreed for Derek.

Meredith didn't understand their friendship, but then again, Derek didn't understand a lot of her and Cristina's friendship either. The betrayal that existed between the two of them was something Derek held over Mark's head for a long time, but eventually, whether it was because of history or something else, they got back the essence of what they used to have. Derek once told Meredith that in a way, he grew to be strangely grateful to Mark, who gave him the excuse to get out and get happy.

"Nice ribbon, Mark," Meredith grinned, fingering the cloth bow in Emily's hair.

"All Sarah's doing," he shot back. "I do have some pride left, Grey."

"Mark said I didn't have to eat any vegetables," Emily smugly chimed in.

Mark threw up his hands and shrugged defenselessly. "She wanted her mom. Not gonna push the broccoli issue on a weepy kid."

"Well we'll start on vegetables again later," Derek said good-naturedly, and let Emily down. He ran a hand across the top of her head, and looked at his friend. "What do you think, do you have time to get some coffee?"

"Uh, yeah," Mark shrugged, like he was still somewhat surprised to be invited anywhere. "Sure. I'm not on the board until 10:30."

"Great. Meredith?"

"Yeah, I have, um, rounds in a little bit, but something quick. We'll take her up after?"

There was never sit-down time for coffee, for either of them. It was always go, go, go until it was time to finally go home. But Derek was finally happy, happy enough to want to have another baby apparently, so if he wanted to buy everyone in the whole hospital coffee and a muffin, that was fine with her.

"Yeah, whenever," he replied, like there was nobody upstairs waiting on him to come fix them, like he didn't have a whole department to run. "Shall we?"

Mark could have watched Emily for five more minutes while she went with Derek to order coffee. Anything to get some time alone with him. The cheerfulness—not that she wasn't thankful for it—was making her nervous. She was starting to believe that he was temporarily euphoric at best, temporarily insane at worst. Of the two of them, he'd always been the optimist, the morning person, the yes-we-can, it's-a-beautiful-day-to-save-lives one, though, granted, it wasn't hard to top her in those areas. But right now, he was freakin' Pollyanna. For her, it was a maddening sort of relief.

They went all the way to the cafeteria at Derek's insistence, and easily found a table for four. "Meredith, just coffee?" Derek asked, wrapping an arm around her waist for a second and kissing the soft skin of her temple. Mark shot her a look, like this side of Derek was one he hadn't seen in a long time either. She raised her eyebrows in response as she slid into the open chair next to the one Emily had chosen, dropped her bag next to her on the floor, and told him coffee sounded good.

"Cappucino?" Derek continued, confirming Mark's order with him like he was a waiter and Mark was a regular customer. "Bean, what do you want? Want me to just pick something out for you?"

"No, I wanna pick it!" Emily cried indignantly. She rarely got treats from the cafeteria and she certainly wasn't going to leave it up to chance.

"Ok, you come with me," Derek replied. He took her hand, and led her towards the food, and Mark took one of the chairs across from Meredith. She watched Emily point at various pastries for a second—danish, which she knew Emily wouldn't like, and then a chocolate muffin, which she definitely would.

"Thanks for watching her this week, Mark," she said. "I don't know what we would have done. I mean, I guess we could have brought her with us, but—"

"Derek's mom raised me too," Mark interjected, so simply that if she hadn't known better, she would have thought he was the second Shepherd son or something. "Have they discharged her yet?" he asked.

"Probably tomorrow. Her ANC is up to 640, but they wanted to give her a chance to get her strength back."

"That's good," he sighed, and for the first time, Meredith stopped to consider Mark's own fear, one that may have been more complicated than Derek's. What do you do when you used to be as close as family and now it's not quite what it was anymore? "That's really good."

"Yeah," she agreed, and smiled reassuringly. "It is. She's still gotta finish her chemo, but it's something."

"You know, your kid is a piece of work," Mark said amusedly, glancing over his shoulder as they both watched Emily stand beside Derek, holding a chocolate muffin wrapped tightly in plastic in her hands, while they waited to pay. His voice switched to something higher-pitched, something childish. "'Mark, the Man with the Yellow Hat sounds like this.'"

Meredith couldn't help but chuckle. "Yeah?"

"Does Derek do voices or something?"

"He does," she replied, and she laughed again at the thought of Mark trying to do the same voices for Emily as well.

"I felt like I was hanging out with Derek. If he was three years old and a girl," he added. "In a good way."

Derek set a tray of drinks on the table, and sat down next to Meredith. Emily bypassed the open seat next to Mark, and crawled up into Meredith's lap.

"Hey," Meredith smiled at Emily. Emily passed the muffin to her to unwrap, and settled into the crook of Meredith's elbow while she waited for her to fix her snack. "Did you read books with Mark?"

"Uh huh, _Curious George_ ," Emily replied matter-of-factly.

She spread the plastic wrap on the table, and peeled the muffin's paper down. "Hm, I didn't think I packed that one for you," she said.

"Mark gotted it for me."

"Figured we'd mix it up a bit, right?" Mark said, and took a sip of his coffee.

"Yeah, we mixed it up," Emily agreed, and broke off a piece of her muffin with two fingers. "Want some?" she asked, offering it to Meredith.

"No, thank you though."

"Is my Nana gonna come here soon?" she asked.

Meredith tensed, and let Derek, who had been amusedly sipping his coffee, take over. Nobody had made him acknowledge yet that this week's victory wasn't an absolute one; that fixing her now didn't mean curing her, it just was going to get her healthy enough to finish chemo.

"Hm, I don't know, Bean," he said calmly. "But maybe we can go visit her when it gets warmer."

"Is her hair back yet?"

He paused this time. "Not yet, because she's still sick, but she is feeling a little better now."

"She's sick for a long time," Emily murmured, and then turned to Mark. "My Nana's hair went away cause she is sick. But she still loves me a lot cause she's still Nana on the inside."

It was the explanation Meredith had given over and over. She didn't know why Emily kept fixating on the hair thing, why it upset her so much. Mary kept up with the weekly phone calls, sometimes more frequently now, and though Emily hadn't seen her since Christmas, she kept asking. Meredith's best guess was that Emily thought as though as soon as her hair came back, that meant that she wasn't sick anymore.

"I know your Nana," Mark answered. "She's so cool, isn't she? And soon, I bet she won't be sick anymore and will want you to visit."

Emily nodded, and Meredith caught Derek grinning widely. She looked down at her watch, and saw that she should have been at least changed into scrubs by now and that Emily had turned most of her muffin into mush.

"Ok," she said, sliding Emily down to the floor and standing up. "I have to go round. Em, come on, time to go upstairs to see Brenda."

Mark passed her pink backpack over the table to Meredith, and Derek leaned down and kissed the top of Emily's head. "Bye, Bean."

"Are you picking me up today?"

"Yeah, I'll see you later, ok?" He nodded to Meredith for confirmation, and grabbed a few napkins and did his best to wipe the chocolate off her fingers.

"Kay," Emily replied, and reached a sticky hand up to take Meredith's free hand. "Bye, Mark!"

"Bye, buddy."

Meredith slung Emily's bag over her own bag, and after a quick stop in the bathroom to rinse Emily's hands off for real, they got on the elevator to go to the fifth floor.

"Did you have fun at Mark's house?" she asked her daughter.

"Yeah, he lives in a 'partment though."

"That's true, you're right."

"And I did surgeries there," Emily added.

"Really?" Meredith asked. She wasn't sure what she expected Mark to do for four days with her child, but the thought that he played with her was kind of funny, kind of heartwarming. The doctor standing next to her, whom she didn't know, smiled too, but Meredith wasn't sure if it was simply in response to a cute kid, or if it was in response to Dr. Sloan. Though her life was far less scandalous and interesting now, it seemed like so many people in this hospital still knew who she was.

"Did Mark come up with that game?" she asked.

"No, I knowed it from before."

"What kinds of surgeries did you do, Dr. Shepherd?"

"I fixed his eyes. And his head. And Sarah's too."

"Mark's girlfriend played too?"

She only met Sarah a few times, even though she and Mark had been dating for about a year. She was known around the hospital, thanks to nurses' station gossip, as the speech pathologist who wouldn't sleep with Mark Sloan on the first date. She seemed nice enough, but Meredith really didn't know anything about her. She didn't even know for sure if she and Mark were living together; every time she thought to ask Derek, he would simply shrug and say he didn't know. But the fact that Sarah played with Emily ratcheted her up a few notches in Meredith's book.

"Yeah, she's like a mommy and Mark's like a daddy but they don't have any kids," Emily said.

"No Emilies?" Meredith asked as the elevator doors opened and people poured out.

"No, there's only one."

Her intern for the day, Dr. Hayes, seemed a little annoyed when Meredith was twenty minutes late. She apologized, and Dr. Hayes handed her the films of her patient's spine that he had taken a few hours before, while he was on-call last night.

"So can I scrub in?" Hayes asked, as they walked down the hall together about an hour later. They had spoken with the patient, consulted with an attending, and agreed that the best course of action would be a discectomy to fix a herniated disk in the lumbar spine.

"Uh," Meredith said, catching sight of Cristina out of the corner of her eye. "Yeah. Book the OR for tomorrow. I'll be right there."

Cristina stood at the nurses' station with her hair tied back in a scrub cap, charting in deep concentration. Meredith stood next to her, leaning on the counter, and waited for Cristina to look up.

"What?"

"I need to talk to you."

"Ok," she replied, and after a moment passed and Meredith said nothing, "No time like the present."

"Not here," she said, and pulled Cristina, chart and all, away from the nurses' station and into a less-busy section of the hallway. "Derek wants to have another baby."

"And telling me here as opposed to ten feet from here makes a difference why?"

"Nurses. know. everything," Meredith said. "So?"

"So?" Cristina repeated. "How am I involved in this?"

"He just said it last night, like it was no big deal, like we'd been talking about it for months!"

"And you haven't been?"

"No, nobody's said a word about it since the anniversary fiasco. And he's been ridiculously happy today. Like annoying happy."

"Didn't his mother just almost die?"

"And this translates into baby?"

"Meredith, I stopped trying to understand Shepherd years ago. I have no idea what goes on in his mind." Meredith cocked her head to the side and shot Cristina a help me look. "Well, do you want to?" Cristina asked.

She'd been thinking about it all day, now that the ball was evidently back in her court. She caught herself daydreaming about stuff Cristina knew nothing about. But she knew herself, and she knew that when it actually happened, she would probably freak out, and she would need him to be the calm one again. And he couldn't do that if he didn't really want this to begin with.

"I don't know if this is part of his freak-out or not," she admitted.

"Ok, then asking him might be a good idea."

She didn't get another break in her day until well after three o'clock, and it took a little while to track Derek down. She rapped twice on the door to Derek's office, and didn't wait for an answer before she walked in and closed the door behind her.

"Were you serious before?" she blurted out. She'd planned the beginnings of this conversation in her mind throughout the day, but all planning had gone out the window apparently, because that's what came out.

Derek looked up from his desk. "What are you talking about?"

"Last night, when you asked me if we could throw out my birth control. Were you serious?"

He smiled, and moved to perch on the corner of his desk. "Yeah, of course. Why?"

"Because last night you acted like it was no big deal! And you freaked out the last time I even mentioned it!"

She was practically frantic now. She liked it when she was able to understand Derek. It made everything a hell of a lot easier. Going back to before, when everything he did was a mystery, wasn't exactly fun.

"I've been thinking about it, and I think that we should," he said. "If you still want to."

"Derek, how the hell am I supposed to know that you're serious?"

"Me telling you is one clue."

"Stop!" she cried, and smacked him on the shoulder. "Why are you so calm about this?!"

"Meredith, what's going on?"

"You tell me! How do I know that once I get pregnant, you're not going to freak out?"

"Are you pregnant?" he asked, half joking, half seriously.

"No, and I didn't throw out my stupid pills either!"

She fell silent, and when she really stopped to look at Derek, he had a bewildered expression on his face. She waited a moment to allow herself to collect her thoughts before she spoke again, and when she did, the words came out much quieter.

"Derek," she murmured, and she couldn't help but smile back when he did at the sound of his name. "You almost lost your mom this week. And I get it if this idea was some kind of carpe diem thing. And it's ok. I'm trying to give you an out here," she finished helplessly.

"What if I don't want an out?" he asked right back. She stepped closer, and his hands found her waist and then slid down low on her hips, drawing her towards him. "Yeah, it's been a long week. It's been a long couple of months. And maybe this is a carpe diem thing, but I've wasted _so_ much time with you," he murmured. They hardly ever talked about it anymore, the months and months that they pushed and hurt each other. He wore an expression that she couldn't quite discern—something wistful and sad in his eyes while a smile played on his lips. "I don't want to waste anymore time. I want you. I want our life. I don't want to wait anymore."

She kissed him, something soft at first, and he responded, running a hand through her hair. His thumbs glided across her hipbones, and he smiled into the kiss. She had missed him without his faith.

"So what are we doing?" he asked.

"We're trying?" she asked back. If he wanted to back out, he should do it now. She'd certainly done it enough times; she wouldn't be mad.

"If you want to."

"I do. I want Emily to have what you have. If something happens to us, I don't want her to be alone. And the timing," she hesitated and took a second to think. "Well, the timing is never going to be good. But I have a little more than a year before I start my fellowship, and I'm not saying that's what we should base our decisions on, but with needing time off, it just makes sense to try now," she said, even though she felt a little silly thinking about the logistics of maternity leave already. "I can wait if you want to wait," she added quickly, "But I just..."

"Meredith?" Derek interjected. "I'm agreeing with you."

The sigh she let out sounded almost like a laugh. "Ok. So we're trying?"

"Yeah," he said, finally definitively. "We are."


	23. You're just gentle on my mind

_And for hours, you're just gentle on my mind._

* * *

Derek promised her that it would be a good night, despite his having to come into the hospital at around midnight to deal with a tenuous post-op patient. He called her right after he got paged to let her know that he was calling Izzie to stay with Emily and he'd be at the hospital soon. Hopefully not another surgery, just a quick check-up, and then maybe he'd be able to steal her away for a little while. No reason, he'd said, why their baby project had to be restricted to home offices only.

She was already working, pulling overnight shifts partly to get extra OR time before the boards, but mostly to make up for taking what felt like more personal days than any resident on staff. Though everyone knew she and the Chief had a history, and that she was married to the head of neuro, there would be no special treatment for Meredith Grey. So, at nearly one o'clock, she was just finishing a long day and barely into a long night when he found her charting at the third floor nurses' station.

"Izzie's already here?" he asked, pulling up next to her.

"Yeah, I saw her earlier. I tried to tell you but you were in such a rush to get off the phone. Where's Emily?"

Somehow, they'd managed to only bring Emily into the hospital in the middle of the night two times. Both times, they had tucked her into bed, irritable and disoriented, in an on-call room bunk, and checked on her every hour to make sure she was still sleeping. Emily made it through daycare the next day, but had epic meltdowns both nights out of sheer exhaustion. They made it a point that bringing Emily into the hospital at night was to be an absolute last resort, and so far, they had been able to stick to it, but they had more and more close calls as Meredith's residency progressed.

"She's at home," he said. "I called Lexie."

"Oh. How's your patient?" she asked.

"I'm waiting on CT results any minute," he replied. "Hey, I hate to break this to you, but my office is out of commission for later."

"What?" she asked, looking up from her chart with concern. "Why?"

"They're deep-cleaning all the carpets in the department heads' offices tonight."

"Well, you're fancy!" she said with a smirk.

"I guess they find that incredibly important people work better when their offices are practically sterile."

"Ha," she said, cocking her head. "What about the on-call room?"

He frowned. "I checked. People are sleeping."

"Interns?" she asked hopefully. "Cause they can sleep on gurneys in hallways. We did."

He shook his head. "Residents. Weidmeyer from ortho and Carroll from peds."

"Crap," she muttered. She'd abandoned her chart, and was instead running through a map of the hospital in her mind, searching every nook and cranny for just a bit of fleeting privacy. "What about the basement?"

"Very retro of you," he said, grinning. They used to go there quite often, back when they first met and their trysts were still very much a secret, but hadn't in years, resorting instead to on-call rooms, and later, to his office after Richard finally decided that his department heads needed some workspace to actually do their jobs effectively.

"Yeah, well." She shrugged, and even she mustered up a slight smile. "Desperate times."

He sighed, and leaned against the counter next to her. "As much as I would love to relive our youth, they moved payroll down there last year, remember? Next to billing? _And_ they expanded the housekeeping offices, so I think our old spot is somebody's office now."

"I guess the supply closet up on four, the big one around the corner from the elevator," she mused aloud. "But that would be kind of trashy to conceive a child among bedpans and cleaning supplies, wouldn't it? We'd be setting the kid up for a lifetime of failure. And every time, he'd just say, 'What do you expect? I was conceived in a supply closet.'"

"Well, I doubt we'd tell him where he was conceived."

He smirked at her, the way he usually did when she freaked out, rambled endlessly, came up with ridiculous hypotheticals, that sort of thing.

"It just would have been nice to be able to have sex tonight."

They rarely did the PDA thing, but his hand was on her hip now, smiling, making the best of what would prove to be a solid 36-hour shift.

"I didn't realize you found me that irresistible, Dr. Grey."

And he was calling her Dr. Grey.

She couldn't remember a time when she hated this job more. This part was supposed to be romantic, maybe even a little sacred, this making a baby thing. It was, at the very least, supposed to be fun, hardly something make time for, something to be scheduled, what it felt like now. She wanted to flirt, to get a little giddy, and-call her old-fashioned-but she kind of wanted this to happen in a bed, her own bed preferably. She just wanted to do it right this time. No accidents, no mistakes. Just something normal, by-the-book. Everything was supposed to be right this time.

She swallowed hard before she answered, her lips unable to hide her smile. "I don't."

"Don't try to cushion my ego or anything," he said.

"No, it's just that I think we only have about another day to really try this month," she confessed, "And since we both had to come into work tonight, it's either have sex at work or wait another month."

Ever since they agreed to have another baby, neither one of them had freaked out. In fact, it had been kind of fun so far. A couple of really good sleepless nights, some clandestine on-call room rendezvous, and weeks of carefree, affectionate, excited anticipation. She knew it probably wouldn't happen the first month. She really did know that. And it was fine when it didn't. She was actually enjoying their efforts anyway. But when it didn't happen the second month, or the third, she started to get worried. It wasn't like either of them were _that_ young. It might take a little while. Except-God, she really hated this job sometimes.

"Well, we can wait another month, right?" he asked. "If we have to. What happened to just letting it happen when it happens?"

"I know, and you're right," she said. "I don't want to rush. I just figured it wouldn't take this long."

"It's only been three months, Mer."

"Yeah," she agreed reluctantly. "And I know that that's normal," she added hastily. "But Emily was a total accident. We weren't trying at all. So I was just kind of hoping that this would be quick." She sighed. The one time she wouldn't have minded being almost blindsided, it wasn't happening. "You know, quick enough to give me time to have the baby and take some maternity leave before my fellowship, especially if we move. I can't take leave the first few months of my fellowship. I just feel like we have a deadline."

"There's no deadline," he said. He squeezed her hand and kissed her forehead. "It'll happen. We'll figure it out."

She shrugged, and gave him a half-hearted nod. It was so rare, the moments when they believed at the same time

"We will," he promised. "But if it makes you feel better, I'll keep an eye on the on-call rooms on 3 and 4 tonight, see if anything opens up."

She smiled, and didn't have time to say anything else before her pager vibrated against her hip and beeped loudly. 911 for her craniotomy from that morning. "Crap, I gotta go."

"I'll page you," he called after her.

"What happened?" Meredith asked as she rushed into a room on the second floor.

Hank Plummer was her 48-year-old patient who came in early that afternoon after someone ran a red light and T-boned his car as he was returning to work from his lunch break. He lay in bed, awake but groggy after his craniotomy. He had a broken arm that was set when he came into the ER, and some bruising from his seatbelt and from the impact, but amazingly, no internal bleeding except for his brain. Meredith had taken him into surgery not long after he arrived at the hospital. He came in with a thick head of black hair, with a little bit of gray sprinkled in, but now his bald head was wrapped in bandages and he'd traded his shirt and tie for a hospital gown. He moaned quietly to himself, not saying anything in particular and barely moving.

"He woke up with a severe headache and slurred speech, ICP is elevated," Dr. Marchione, the intern whom Cristina had assigned to her that morning, reported nervously.

"Ok, let's give him 10 of Mannitol," Meredith said, looking at the latest updates to his chart as she spoke. "Mr. Plummer, can you tell me who the president is?"

He mumbled something incomprehensible, definitely not the clear, articulate 'Obama' that she was looking for. He got the date right, but his speech was slurred at best, completely jumbled at worst. He let his eyes flutter open for a second when she specifically asked him to, and he was reacting to pain, or at least realizing that pain was there, but his intracranial pressure level did concern her.

"Call down to rapid CT and let them know we're coming," she instructed Dr. Marchione. "Mr. Plummer, we're going to figure out what's going on, ok?"

He mumbled his assent, and groaned a little when they started to break down his bed and move it towards the door.

"Is your wife here, Mr. Plummer?"

She'd noticed a wedding ring on him when he came in, and had spoken to his wife, a slightly frumpy but perfectly pleasant woman named Denise, after the surgery. Looking around the room, she was clearly nowhere to be found.

"Home," he said quietly, wincing in pain, like it not only took great effort to conjure the word but that every sound caused his head to throb. "Kids."

"Ok, well we're going to call her, ok?"

It happened quickly, the way it always did in surgery. His brain swelled, and then his vitals bottomed out, his heart flatlined, and all of a sudden, just like that, he was dead. It still shocked her every time, how life could slip away within seconds. She knew it wasn't her fault, that he sustained substantial injuries in his accident and that she had done all she could, but she couldn't help but feel at least a tiny bit responsible, like by this point in her career, she should have been able to do more for him, to save him by sheer skill alone.

His wife got to the hospital while they were still in surgery. She hated this part, the after part when she had to come out, with her hair still tied back in a scrub cap, and give someone the worst news of their life. She sat with Denise for awhile, she wasn't sure how long exactly, and answered every question she had, hugged her, and let her cry. She left only when Denise did to go make some phone calls.

Derek paged not long after, and when she checked her watch, she realized he waited pretty much the standard length of a craniotomy to page her to the on-call room on the third floor.

She trudged up there, the second wind that came with surgery gone entirely, and found him sprawled out on the bottom bunk, lying on top of the slightly mussed sheets.

"I found us an empty room," he said proudly. "We're still in your 24-hour window, aren't we?"

"My patient just died," she said. The exhaustion made her voice practically expressionless, but from the way his face changed at her words, she knew her eyes betrayed how she really felt. She crawled into bed next to him, without bothering to lock the door or even take her shoes off.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, slinging an arm over her and pulling her closer to him. He kissed her shoulder and the back of her neck. "IT analyst guy?"

"Yeah."

"What happened? I thought he was stable after surgery."

"He was. Turns out, he had another bleed, elevated ICP a couple hours after surgery. Took him into the OR and the bleed was just," she trailed off.

"I'm sorry," he said, filling the silence immediately. He ran a hand down her waist, over her hip, to her thigh, but didn't try anything more. He kissed her neck and her shoulders, and let his chin rest in the dip where her bones came together.

"Can we just sleep?" she asked quietly after a moment passed. "Before we have to get up and do this all over again all day tomorrow? We are within the 24-hour window, but..."

"No, it's ok," he said. "We'll sleep."

"Ok," she sighed. They didn't move much, or really try to pull the blankets up over them. She was so tired, and she was sure he was too, but sleep wasn't coming. She tried not to calculate how many hours she could get if she fell asleep right then and was uninterrupted until morning rounds; that just made it harder to rest.

"Lexie is going to bring Emily in with her tomorrow morning," she said blankly into the silence of the darkened room. Her sister had left a careful message for her while she was in surgery. She wasn't sure if Derek was still fully awake, but she was, so she just kept talking. "Around 7:30. I'll meet them at the nurses' station and then take her up to daycare."

It took her a long time to let Lexie in, longer than it probably should have. But, like so many other things, it got easier when Emily came. Meredith wasn't sure how to be Lexie's sister, but Lexie set aside their awkwardness and fussed over the baby almost as much as Izzie did. Though nothing could really make up for the 25 years they spent not knowing each other, Emily did much to bridge the gap, and Meredith wanted Lexie around, wanted her to be part of the group.

"Can you still leave early tomorrow night?" Derek asked, letting a few seconds pass.

"If nobody else dies on me."

"Tomorrow will be better," he assured her. "And then we can go eat bad food, watch the game, let Em get a sugar high. You'll feel better."

"Yeah, I'm just so tired."

They fell quiet then, and Meredith willed sleep to come. She pictured it as something concrete, something definite that she needed to find, something that felt more and more elusive for the past few months. Feeling Derek settle against her, she tried counting sheep for a little while, and shifted her body with his to adjust.

It didn't take long before she gave up on the sheep thing and started thinking about all the "when" questions, probably all the things robbing her of her sleep in the first place. When will I get pregnant? When will Derek's mom be ok? When will I choose my fellowship? When will I know? When will it all make sense?

He wasn't talking, but she could tell he was still awake, lying against her and breathing slow. He rolled away from her after awhile, apparently also too restless to sleep.

"We should think about getting a nanny," he said.

They hadn't had this discussion in literally years, because when Derek tried, back when she was pregnant with Emily, she had a minor, slightly small-ok, epic-freak out. She was content to blame the intensity of it on hormones, but the basic premise of her argument was the same: their child was not going to be raised by a nanny. Meredith wasn't even crazy about daycare, but she recognized it as necessary. He'd pressed her on it then, asked her how she expected this to work, and she admitted that she wasn't sure, but that her mind was made up. And so far, they'd done ok. A few close calls, yes, but nothing awful.

She was too tired to say all that though, so she gave a firm no, and tried to focus on sleeping.

"Just someone to stay with her overnight on occasion," he said.

Any chance of sleep coming soon left immediately, and she opened her eyes and rolled back towards him. "No," she said, a little more angrily this time.

"There won't always be an Izzie or a Lexie who happen to have the night off."

" _We_ are raising our daughter," she said firmly.

"Just to make it easier."

"We're not doing it."

"Why?" he asked, before adding softly, "I just want to make it a little easier on us, and on Em."

He never asked why before; she always assumed he already knew, that it was obvious why the sacrifice of not seeing him as much, working opposite shifts sometimes, was worth it. The way he was looking at her now though, from what she could make out of his face in the darkness of the room, he really wanted to know why.

"If a nanny's there," she said, and she paused while she searched for the right words. What was the end of that sentence? For a second, she wanted to start over, to say something else. She wanted to tell him that even though Emily looked like her, more and more so every day, she didn't want Emily to be her. That it would start with a few nights and weekends, and then all of a sudden, someone else would be buying Emily's birthday gifts, and maybe, just once or twice accidentally, but enough to break Meredith's heart, Emily would call someone else 'Mommy.'

"If a nanny's there," she said again, trying to explain it to him in the simplest way possible, "We're not."

"Ok," he replied quietly, surrendering as he rolled onto his back.

"Ok," she said. "Let's just sleep."

When Meredith's pager woke her at 6:30 with a question from Mr. Plummer's nurse, she shook Derek awake with her. They'd gotten a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, but, as she always felt the morning after a patient died, she didn't feel rested. And, about an hour later when Lexie arrived with Emily, she could see that she wasn't the only one who had a long night.

Emily, wearing khaki shorts and a navy Yankees t-shirt, held Lexie's hand and her head lolled to the side as the two of them walked down the hall. She leaned heavily into Lexie's grasp, letting her bear a lot of her weight, and she didn't run to Meredith the way she usually did after Meredith spent the night away from her.

"Hey," Meredith said as brightly as she could, and smiled gratefully at Lexie. They didn't ask her to babysit much, but when they did, it always seemed like she was waiting for them to call. Meredith couldn't remember a time when Lexie had said no.

"How was your night?" she asked.

"It was ok," Lexie said hesitantly. "She had a hard time falling back to sleep last night after Derek brought her over. I let her choose which bed she wanted; I mean, I only have my bed and the couch, but still, she didn't seem to want either. So she finally got to bed around 2:30, and she didn't want to get up this morning."

Meredith frowned, and felt a pang of guilt twinge inside, right at her gut. A three- (almost four, Emily would remind her) year-old shouldn't be sleep-deprived. "Hey," she said quietly, and scooped Emily up into her arms. "Hi. Are you ok?"

"Mommy," Emily mumbled, wrapping her arms around her, and nestling her face into the crook of Meredith's neck. She rested her head on Meredith's shoulder, and said, "I'm tired."

"I know," she said sympathetically, "You can take a nap in a little bit, ok? Maybe a morning and an afternoon nap, if you want."

"No, now," Emily whined.

"We'll see what Miss Brenda says, ok? I want you to have all your energy for tonight. Daddy and I are going to take you to see the Yankees. Do you remember that?"

"Yeah," she sighed sleepily.

Meredith tickled her ribs gently with one hand, trying to keep her from falling asleep. "Are you excited?" she asked.

"Yeah," she replied, but the dullness in her voice didn't match the excitement she hadn't been able to mask the entire week prior.

"Me too."

As they said their goodbyes to Lexie, Emily wrapped her legs more tightly around Meredith's waist, clinging to her like a koala to a eucalyptus tree and barely responded to Lexie telling her that she had fun and wanted to see her again soon. Meredith thanked Lexie again, and slung Emily's bag over her free shoulder on the way to the elevator. She tried to make Emily walk, in an attempt to get her to wake up, but when she tried to put her down, Emily whimpered loudly and just held on tighter.

She tried to be as chatty as possible, though she couldn't blame Emily; she didn't feel like talking much either, and like her daughter, she would have liked nothing more than to go back to bed right then. She figured the constant sound of her talking would at least keep Emily from falling back to sleep, and she had to smile a little at Emily's increasingly loud grumbling. Her daughter was three going on seventeen.

"I want a cotton candy," Emily finally said, so frustrated that Meredith had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at first. Emily had never tasted cotton candy before, and until now, Meredith didn't know that she even knew what it was. She completely understood Emily's crankiness, and felt horribly guilty for being the one to have caused the situation in the first place, but she also couldn't help but find Emily's singular demand to be a bit amusing.

"I think we could make that work," she promised.

"A pink one."

"Ok, we'll have to look for some like that."

By the time they made it upstairs to the daycare a moment later, Emily looked a little more awake, but still cranky. "Em, you have to walk now, ok?" Meredith said, and as she set her down, Emily's flipflops clapped against the tile floor.

She walked her inside, and just as she was about to leave, Emily looked up at her and said, "Mommy, you're coming right back, right?"

Meredith knelt down and kissed Emily's forehead. "I'm coming as soon as I finish work. I promise."

The rest of the day turned out to be much better than the previous night, and by 7:00, Emily had gotten her second wind and was pointing to just about every concession stand at Safeco Field, saying, "I want that!"

Derek got them three seats about twenty rows back along the third base line. He went to a Mariners game every year at least once since he moved to Seattle, always during a Yankees series, sometimes with Mark and sometimes with Emily and Meredith. Meredith couldn't care less about baseball. She was happy to wear a Yankees t-shirt and sit through a sporting event for the chance to see Derek and Emily together like this, even if they were some of the only Yankee fans in the stadium.

"Mommy said I could have cotton candy," Emily said matter-of-factly from her seat between Meredith and Derek.

"How about some real dinner first?" Derek asked. "Relatively speaking."

Emily shrugged and nodded, and Meredith asked, "Do you want me to go? Since you actually like the game?"

"No, I can go, it won't take long. What do you want?"

"Whatever you two get is fine," she said, and watched Derek disappear up the steps and onto the concourse.

Emily looked around, wide-eyed and awake, at all the people surrounding them and at the vast field in front of her. The game just started, and since the Yankees were batting first, the heckling had begun.

"Em, do you remember what the rules of the game are?" Meredith asked.

"Three strikes, you're out!" Emily chimed in happily.

"Yep," Meredith agreed. "I think that's the biggest one."

"And if you get a home run, you get to run around all the bases," she said. "I'm gonna do that."

"I think that's only for the players, Em," Meredith chuckled.

"And when Daddy yells at baseball, he doesn't really mean it," Emily continued knowingly, completely ignoring Meredith.

"No, he doesn't, he's just overreacting."

"Yeah, he's overreacting," Emily agreed, perfectly articulating a word that she definitely would have stumbled over just months ago.

"You know how big you were when Daddy took you to your first baseball game?" Meredith asked.

Emily looked up at her. She went every year with Derek, but she was still much too young to really understand or pay attention to the actual game. "How?"

"Like this big," Meredith said, holding her hand about two feet off the ground. "Only ten months old. You couldn't even walk yet."

"No!" Emily grinned in disbelief.

"Yes!" Meredith said, and tousled her hair. She wanted Emily to sit with her, to snuggle in her lap especially as the night progressed and it grew colder outside, but Emily seemed perfectly content to sit in her chair by herself, legs dangling just barely off the seat. "I think this is one of Daddy's favorite things to do with you, Em."

"Cause of Pop took Daddy," Emily said.

Derek's father had been largely a mystery to Meredith-until she met Derek's family. While it took Derek years to tell her how his father died and to share memories of him with her, Meredith found that Jack was still a common fixture in the Shepherd house. Derek's mother and sisters talked about him often-not about how he died, but about how he lived. It was their way of ensuring that he would never be forgotten. Never out of sight, never out of mind. Derek internalized most of it, smiling at the memories his sisters and mother brought up, but rarely contributing any of his own until Emily was born. Though he didn't talk about his father every day, he shared more about him with Emily than he did with anyone else.

"Yeah," Meredith replied. "How did you know that?"

"Daddy told me."

"Oh."

She knew it because she found the Yankees World Series ring in Derek's top drawer one day when she was putting away some of his laundry. Emily knew because he told her.

When Meredith asked about it, Derek told her about the games they went to while he was young, and how his dad taught him how to play the game. Derek never wore the ring, which he received not through Jack's will but as the sort of de facto only-son inheritor, but he kept it tucked safely away in its box. She never caught him looking at it, but she assumed that it comforted him just to know that it was there.

She never asked him about his father, but was always ready to listen when he had something to share. She knew Derek missed him terribly, especially after Emily was born, and she wasn't sure how to help him. But it comforted her to know that Derek did have someone to share his memory with, even if that someone was their three-year-old daughter.

"But Pop can't go to the Yankees anymore cause he's in heaven," Emily said quietly. "So now I go with Daddy so he doesn't have to go by himself."

Meredith looked at her, a little stunned, and tried to come up with something appropriate to say. She wasn't expecting to explain death and the concept of afterlife now, especially not in a baseball stadium of all places. With Mary's prognosis looking up, she actually wasn't planning on explaining the circle of life to Emily anytime soon, but it seemed like Emily beat her to the punch.

Before she could respond at all though, Derek returned, with a tray of drinks in one hand and a tray of food in the other. "Who's hungry?" he asked, and Emily reached up anxiously.

It didn't take long for Emily to finish her hot dog and want other entertainment besides the actual baseball game. Meredith couldn't blame her really; the Yankees were winning, but only by two runs to one in the fourth inning. The game was a kind of defensive struggle that baseball junkies and pitching experts relished in, but for casual spectators like her and Emily, it was, frankly, a little dull.

Derek left briefly in the sixth inning to answer a page, and Emily got even more antsy in the brief time that he was gone. All Meredith could deduce was that Emily had built the night up in her mind, and it simply wasn't living up to expectations. When Derek returned with a pink cotton candy in hand, she lasted another quick inning, but by the seventh inning stretch, Emily was starting to fade.

With pink sugar stuck around her mouth, she looked at Meredith like she expected her to come up with something to do. The Yankees were trailing by a run then, and Derek was into the game. Though he tried to explain it to Emily, she wasn't as interested in listening as she might have been any other day. Meredith tried taking Emily on a walk around the stadium concourse, in a vain effort to pass some time, but by the time they made one loop around, she took Emily back to their seats only to get Derek and tell him it was time to go. She could feel that Emily was about five minutes away from a major meltdown from sheer exhaustion.

They managed to hold off the tears until they were deep into the parking lot. Looking for the car in the dark, already past Emily's bedtime, Emily just couldn't hold it together any longer. She whined and burst into tears, pulling hard on Meredith's hand as she let her bear her weight. She couldn't really even tell them what was wrong; she just kept crying for Mommy and Daddy. Ten minutes into the drive home though, and Emily was fast asleep, passed out in her carseat in the back.

"You ready to do this all again?" Meredith asked as they drove home in silence, motioning to the backseat.

"Yeah," he replied, so simply and confidently that she was kind of in love with it. It made her forget all the hard stuff that came with it, like morning sickness and childbirth and nights like last night, and made her crave all the good things.

"You know," she said after a minute or two. "She knows how important this stuff is to you. She gets it."

"I wish I could take her more. We only get a few Yankee games a year out here."

"Well, yeah, that," Meredith agreed. "But she was talking about her Pop." Derek took his eyes off the road for a second to look at her. "When you were over getting food. She said that she goes with you because Pop is in heaven and can't go."

"She said that?" he asked softly.

"She listens. She said you told her."

"I told her that I used to go to games with my dad," Derek said. "She got the heaven part by herself. Or from Mom."

"We have a smart kid," Meredith agreed.

They fell into exhausted silence. Meredith thought about the long months of pregnancy before her, all the time she would need to recuperate and the time the baby deserved with her. Her fellowship applications were beginning to come back. She received a resounding yes from Boston, a city where the Grey name still carried a huge amount of weight in the medical world, and another nice offer from Nashville. Baltimore had passed, and she was still waiting on a few others. And, of course, there was always Seattle. The next year suddenly felt very long to her; she wanted a baby in her arms and a decision to be made. But when she tried to tell Derek, all that came out was, "I just want to have enough time."

"We will," he assured her.

"Thirteen months until my fellowship starts, Derek."

"So we have a year to keep trying."

"I need at _least_ eight weeks from July first. And what if I need a C-section? Even if not, I can't just have the baby, take a 20-minute power nap, and go perform a craniotomy the same day. The baby is going to need me all the time for awhile. So we don't have a year. We have this month and next month."

"So we're just going to have to put in some extra effort next month. Is that what you're telling me?" he asked, calmly, even a bit flirtatiously.

"Yeah."

He took one of her hands in hers, steering with just his left, and squeezed hard. He made no promises that all would be well, and gave her no timeline. He offered just one assurance: "I'll make sure my office maintenance is up-to-date by then and that the room is available."

"That's all I'm asking."

They arrived back at home not long after. She loved the house like this, lit up in the dark with white light, with the porch light on and the whole house warm. The car crunched over the gravel of the driveway, and Emily didn't wake when Derek eased her out of her carseat and into his arms. She leaned on him like a very limp but solid weight against his chest, sleeping peacefully.

"I hope the next one's like her," Meredith said simply, tucking a lock of Emily's hair back behind her ear as they stood in the driveway.

"Me too."

He carried her upstairs, and Meredith pulled out a nightgown for her out of her dresser while he laid her down on top of her bed. They didn't turn her light on and tried to be as quiet as possible.

"I'll be right back," he whispered.

She shook her head. "This will only take a second."

She eased Emily's head up off the pillow just long enough to slip her shirt off and the nightgown back on. She pulled her flipflops off and left them at the foot of the bed. Emily woke just barely when Meredith unbuttoned her shorts and lifted her bottom off the mattress so she could take those off too.

"Mommy?" she mumbled sleepily, hardly conscious.

"We're home," Meredith whispered, and kissed her forehead. "You're asleep. Go back to sleep, you're in your bed."

In their bedroom, Derek had changed into just his boxers and a t-shirt and was turning down the bed when she came in. He turned when he heard her tread on the creaky floorboard by the door, and he tossed their pillows on the floor and asked, "Is she ok?"

"She's good. Asleep."

"Long day," he said, and she nodded.

"Hey," he said. "You know we'll be ok, right? We're going to figure it all out."

"I know," she said, so truthfully that she couldn't help but smile in spite of herself.

"You know, you look good in that shirt," he said, grinning cockily at her.

"Navy looks good on me."

"Maybe it would look better on the floor," he said, drawing her closer and catching her lips with his. She wrapped her arms around his waist and he pressed gentle kisses down the slender curve of her neck to the hem of her t-shirt. He pulled her shirt over her head and his lips went immediately back to her bare skin, trailing lower this time across her chest and down to her cleavage. "Definitely better," he said.

She smiled, and he kissed her hard on the mouth, pulling her closer for some breathless, heady making out, what they would have done earlier in his office or in the on-call room. She felt him start to grow hard against her belly, and he broke apart only for a moment to start on the button of her jeans. "I like you with your pants off too," he said.

"You gotta match me," she challenged, and pulled his shirt over his head as well.

She kicked off her sandals, and shucked off her pants, and he backed her up against the bed. Laying her down on top of the covers, he hovered over her and kissed every inch of her, making her rise up to meet him. With the unfulfilled promise of the night before, she felt like they were both in a hurry, searching for comfort and wanting to make the other feel good in ways only they could.

"I don't know if I'm still fertile," she said, almost panting at the anticipation of it.

He smiled, and slowed down for a second. He found her hand and held it, and kissed her gently as if to let her know that they had plenty of time. "So how about this time is just for us?" he asked.


	24. Of the million things a heart can hold

_And of the million things a heart can hold  
And of all the things I've come to know  
I can see I'll be all right with you now by my side  
And if there ever was a shred of doubt  
This hopelessly romantic now  
And I hope that time can slow us down  
And minutes pass like hours now_

* * *

Alex and Izzie were quite possibly the only couple at Seattle Grace who took longer to get their act together than he and Meredith did. Derek mulled over the idea quietly to himself while he surveyed his closet in preparation for a rehearsal dinner to which, from the looks of it, they would probably be arriving late. He had somehow gotten roped into being in the wedding party, more for the sake of balance than anything else. Though Meredith was the maid of honor, there was no best man, as he and George were more Izzie's choices for groomsmen than Alex's.

"This isn't black tie too, is it?" he asked Meredith as he rummaged through some of his hangers.

"No," she replied from the bathroom. "Tonight's not, tomorrow is. I don't think you even need a jacket for tonight."

She kept the door open while she was getting ready, standing in front of the sink in a black bra and sweatpants. Every lock of her hair was wrapped tightly around rollers and pressed close to her head, and she leaned closer to the mirror as she applied her black eyeliner and mascara.

"Which one?" he asked, holding up white and light blue oxford shirts.

She poked her head out of the bathroom, and studied the options for a second. "White."

He slipped on a pair of charcoal-colored trousers, and shrugged the shirt on afterward, tucking it in before he looked for a belt. His hair, already coiffed from that morning, needed just to be checked before walking out the door.

He stepped in the bathroom, and Meredith wordlessly moved to the side to share the mirror with him. He examined himself briefly, and then looked over at her, just staring at herself, saying nothing. She'd begun to unroll the curlers, and sections of her hair fell in soft waves on her shoulders.

"You ok?" he asked.

"Yeah, I just feel a little...," she stared harder at herself, touched her face, rubbed at her temples, but said nothing else.

"Are you sick?"

"No, I just feel…blah."

She hadn't turned to face him yet, and stared at herself a moment longer before she resumed unrolling the rest of her curlers.

"Do you want me to call and let them know we'll be late?" he pressed.

"Yeah, and give Izzie a heart attack?" she asked. "No, we have to go, we're in the wedding. We have to rehearse or whatever." She slid her sweatpants down to her ankles and took her dress, a summery minty blue sleeveless thing, off the hanger. As she slipped the dress over her shoulders and pulled it down past her hips, she said, "I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"I'm good," she assured him. "Zip me?"

She turned and he reached for the zipper that rested at the small of her back. It pulled up without complaint, hugging her waist tightly, but when Meredith turned back to look at herself in the mirror, she grumbled and said, "Well, my boobs are definitely not going to fall out of this dress."

"I'm sure Izzie will appreciate that," Derek said, smiling.

"Seriously," she said, and turned to face him. "Does it look too tight?"

"No, it looks good." He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt to never say anything that might so much as hint that anything a woman wore looked less than amazing, but he didn't have to lie now; the dress looked perfect.

Meredith shook his opinion off and turned back towards the mirror. Cupping her breasts, she pushed them up a little and pursed her lips. Turning to the side, she looked again at herself in the mirror.

"Crap," she muttered. "I hope the bridesmaid dress fits tomorrow." She sighed, and left the bathroom to grab her heels off the bedroom floor. "Is Emily ready?"

"Yeah, she's all set," he replied. "You know, if you hurry, you could wear your black dress instead."

Meredith's head shot up immediately. "So you do think it looks bad," she said accusingly.

"No!" That part of his response was instantaneous, but he fumbled for a second to try to figure out how to get out of this gracefully. "I just think that if you're uncomfortable now, then you're not going to feel any better after a few hours in that dress. You look beautiful," he finished honestly.

Meredith smoothed the dress down over her hips, crossed and uncrossed her arms, and pulled gently at the dresses armholes as if the fabric was pulled so tautly over her breasts that she could barely breathe.

Derek watched her fuss and a slow smile spread across his face. Maybe? Could she be? No realization, just potential, but the small flicker of hope excited him. And apparently he was doing a terrible job at hiding it, because when she looked back up at him, her expression soured and she said crossly, simply, "No."

"I didn't say anything!" he cried defensively.

"I know what you want to say," she replied knowingly. "And no."

"I said nothing. But," he said, getting a little excited in spite of himself and much to Meredith's irritation, "If you were so inclined, it'd take you three minutes. Five or ten if you count prep time."

"Prep time?" Meredith asked, wrinkling her nose. "You're gross."

"Three minutes," he countered back, and looked at his watch. So they were running a little late. Whatever. "We have time," he said, "And a test in the cabinet. How convenient."

They kept boxes of ovulation tests and pregnancy tests in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, using them frequently over the past several months. He felt like they were always checking, trying to catch lightning in a bottle. He agreed with her frustration, though he wouldn't let her know it, and wouldn't have minded putting it off another day except now his curiosity was piqued.

"No," she said firmly. "It's Izzie's day. And Alex's. I don't want to be upset."

They made it to the church with not an extra minute to cushion them. Meredith seemed to have pushed aside her concerns, and rushed them inside, holding Emily's hand as they trotted quickly across the parking lot.

Inside, the church was about half decorated. Ribbon and tulle adorned the pews, but the flowers hadn't arrived yet. At the front, a tall man with silver streaked hair sat at a piano and trilled a few notes. Several guests sat patiently in the pews, some of whom Derek recognized and some he didn't. In the back, Cristina, George, Bailey, and Tuck stood to the side, as out of the way as possible, while Izzie flitted around the building in excitement. Meredith kicked off 'wedding week,' as Izzie gleefully called it, with a bachelorette party at Joe's last weekend, and Izzie grew positively more bubbly with each passing day.

"Hey!" she exclaimed, rushing over to the three of them almost as soon as they walked in the door. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a tight bun and looked that much brighter and shinier against her sleeveless black dress, tied at the waist with a thick black sash.

"Hey," Meredith said as Izzie pulled her into a spontaneous, excited hug. "We're not late, are we?"

"No, you're right on time," Izzie assured her breathlessly, and then looked down at Emily, who was standing quietly by Meredith's side. "Oh my God, she looks adorable!" she squatted and reached out to touch the hem of Emily's tangerine-colored dress. "Emily, you look beautiful!"

Emily loved Izzie, and only knew her as the fun aunt who played games with her and let her bake cookies whenever she slept over. She knew nothing of Izzie's old demons and considered her one of her most favorite people aside from her parents. When Izzie sat her down and asked her if she could help her at her wedding by being the flower girl, Emily readily accepted the task and had been talking about it for weeks.

Emily smiled shyly. "You look pretty too."

"Thanks, buddy. Are you all ready to practice for tomorrow?"

She straightened up, and Emily nodded seriously. Meredith ran a hand gently over the top of Emily's head, smoothing down her curls.

"Ok, well they need us over here," she said, motioning Meredith and Emily over to where Bailey, Tuck, and Cristina were standing. "And, Derek, you can go with Alex and George. George!" she called, "You and Derek can go to the front now."

After Meredith and Emily successfully walked down the aisle, Meredith solo and Emily with Tuck, who had been commissioned as ring bearer, the entire party went to a restaurant not too far away. They had rented a banquet room, and they all sat down together at one long table.

While Izzie and Alex spoke to the manager, and prepared to start the party, he and Meredith sat down at the end of the table. Cristina sat next to Meredith on one side, and Emily sat next to Derek right across from them. Altogether, there were 11 of them, including Alex and Izzie's mothers and the wedding party. As they readied to celebrate, the waiter came to their end of the table and asked, "May I offer anyone a glass of wine?"

"Booze?" Cristina asked, perking up after being a good sport with Izzie all evening. If he knew Cristina even a little, he knew this wasn't her thing. "Absolutely," she replied to the waiter, and held up her glass for him to fill. "Keep it coming."

"Cristina," Meredith said almost sternly.

"Look at it this way" she shrugged, "I'll find the rest of the evening much more entertaining after this."

"For you?" the waiter asked Meredith.

"Oh," she replied, and considered it for a second. "No, I'm ok." Cristina raised an eyebrow and looked at her quizzicly, and Meredith quickly added, "I'm driving."

"Yeah, in two hours," Cristina shot back, but Meredith silenced her with a look that plainly said please do not draw attention to this.

Cristina looked at Derek after that, making eye contact and keeping it for a few seconds, but he had no information to give her, even if he wanted to. He agreed with her that it was strange of Meredith not to have even one glass of wine, especially because they had taken his car tonight in the first place, but he had already tried to get some information out of her and failed. He managed a barely noticeable shrug of the shoulder before he turned to Emily and helped her order a lemonade.

Alex and Izzie sent them home a few hours later with instructions to report to the hotel the following afternoon for hair and makeup. Late nights were getting a little easier for Emily to tolerate and, at just over a month until her fourth birthday, she held it together really well through the entire rehearsal dinner. She chatted excitedly about the next day for the first few minutes of the ride home, but after a few miles, old habits prevailed and she dozed off at a little after 10:30.

"I can't believe they're finally doing it after all these years," he said from behind the wheel of their SUV. Though Meredith didn't touch a drop of alcohol all night, she asked him to drive anyway. She was tired, she said, and now, about halfway home, she had reclined her seat a bit and even had her eyes closed on and off for most of the ride.

Derek couldn't help but wonder to himself who everyone at work was going to talk about now. He and Meredith had been the hottest gossip at Seattle Grace for most of their relationship, even after they got married. Though they never got proof, he was still certain that a good portion of the surgical staff had participated in an underground baby pool when Emily was born. He loved that not many people considered them to be that interesting anymore, and he was happy to let Alex and Izzie assume the role of the Seattle Grace cover story. After tomorrow, who would be next?

"They look happy," Meredith said softly. Though she never played matchmaker outright, he knew that she always thought that they were good for each other, and she was thrilled for them now.

"They do," he agreed.

"They're going to last," she said.

"It's a good feeling."

They fell into silence and Meredith reached into the cup holder for a hair tie, pulling her hair back into a tight ponytail. She closed her eyes again. She leaned to the side, her legs bent at the knees and locked together. They were almost home.

"You're sure you don't want to take a test." It came out as more of a statement, a certainty that he was certain of, rather than the question he meant it to be.

"Yes."

As the night went on, he became more and more curious, but he knew her so well, and he knew that he would have to wait until after Alex and Izzie left tomorrow night before Meredith would even consider it. Still, he couldn't help but push a little bit, and said, "We have one in the bathroom already."

She sighed. "I know," she said crankily.

Of course she knew. They kept getting their wires crossed as to who was going to buy the home pregnancy tests, and it seemed like every time it was almost time to find out and they went to work separately, they would each come home with a bag from the drugstore. He knew it had been weighing on her mind that there were plenty of unopened test boxes in the cabinet under their bathroom sink.

"So," he murmured. He knew he should drop it, that he'd find out soon enough, that they both would, but he couldn't help himself. Despite all his experience, despite the bitter disappointment he knew he would deal with if this next test was also negative, he couldn't shake the good feeling he had about this month. He continued, "I assume you're going to pee before bed anyway."

"Yeah, I'm sure I will," she agreed, the frustration apparent in her voice. "But not on a stick. It's just PMS, Derek."

"Or it could be..."

"It's not," she said tersely, and he knew she desperately wanted to end the conversation there.

"Then why didn't you drink tonight?" he pressed on. "Not even one glass of wine." As much as he knew that she didn't want to talk about it, he also knew that he had setting on his side. For as long as they were in the car, and they had about another five minutes, they couldn't fight about it, at least not loudly. With Emily asleep in the backseat, their volume now was about as loud as was possible. "It could be," he finished gently.

She sat up a little, and faced him, even though he could barely steal a glance at her as he navigated the dark road up to their house.

"Ok, it could be," she conceded, and he couldn't help that his heart lept up in his chest at the thought. It took her a few seconds to find her next words, and when she did, they came out softer than the others. "But I have to be happy until Izzie and Alex leave the reception tomorrow. And I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that if I take another test and it's negative."

"Is that going to be better than having your mind elsewhere all day, just wondering?" he asked. He knew that she was anxious about trying to time this pregnancy with everything going on in their lives, and he knew that despite her best efforts, she still had the tendency to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. But couldn't this be it? Didn't the universe owe it to them after everything else that had happened? Wouldn't it at least be better to know?

"We could be happy, we could be disappointed, but at least we'd know," he said. He paused, and then asked her gently, "Just think about it."

She sighed. "I'll think about it."

"So," he said, when he realized he had done all he could and just wanted to break the tension. "Izzie's mom was quite a trip."

Robbie Stevens had come into town a few days ago, wordlessly answering any questions anyone might have had about where Izzie got her bubbly, chatty personality. She spent two solid minutes hitting on Derek before Meredith realized and came over to rescue him.

Meredith laughed a little, and with that, all his prodding was forgiven. "Yeah, just wait until she hits the dance floor tomorrow."

The next afternoon, they were already running late. He laid his jacket across the bed, tucked his shirt into his pants, and knocked on the closed bathroom door. Over the dull roar of the hairdryer, he called out, "Meredith!"

"I'm almost ready," she called back, and then turned off the hairdryer. She opened the door and popped her head out. In her jeans and t-shirt, with hair only semi-dry, she asked, "Can you make sure Emily's stuff is ready to go so we can just walk out the door as soon as my hair is dry? She doesn't have to be dressed. We're getting dressed at the hotel, and then going to the church."

"We're not going right to the church?"

"No, I told you that!" she said indignantly. "Her dress and everything should be all laid out. Can you just go check and make sure she's dressed and ready to go?"

"Yeah, call me when you're done," he replied. He checked his watch, and stepped out into the hall. "Bean?" he said loudly. "Where are you?"

"In my room," Emily called back in a sing-song voice.

He found her there, standing inside her closet, pulling shoes out one by one and tossing them on the floor in front of her. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to find my shoes."

"Your wedding shoes or your shoes that you're going to wear over there?" he asked.

"My flops."

He looked over at the bed and, sure enough, her flower girl dress and a small shoe box were spread out over the comforter. Izzie had chosen a sleeveless white dress for her, with a sage-colored green sash around the middle to match the bridesmaids' dresses. Even if all the bridesmaids weren't getting ready at the hotel beforehand, there would be no way that Meredith would have let Emily put it on any sooner than an hour before the ceremony.

"Is that what you're wearing?" he asked, pointing to the pink shorts and gray t-shirt that she had on now.

Emily nodded and resumed digging through the pile of shoes to try to find the shoes she wanted. He sat down on the floor to help her, holding up one shoe at a time only for her to shake her head no and keep looking.

His phone rang loudly, and when he reached into his pocket for it and looked at the caller ID, he told Emily, "It's Nana."

Every time she called, he couldn't help the fear that caught in his throat. She was doing very well, and had just started back on her chemotherapy regimen, but every time the phone rang, he worried that something was wrong. He flipped open his phone and said, as cheerfully as he could, "Hey, Mom."

"Hi, Derek," Mary said warmly. "How are you?"

"I'm doing well," he said, and after a beat, asked nervously, "How are you doing? Everything ok?"

"Everything's fine," she assured him, "Don't worry."

"Good," he said, the relief apparent in his tone. "Hey, Mom? Can you talk to Emily for one second?" he asked. "I'm trying to find a pair of shoes that she lost."

"Absolutely, put her on."

"Em, Nana wants to talk to you," he said, and passed the phone to Emily while he dug through her closet. He was going to have to talk to Meredith about how many shoes this kid had.

"Hi, Nana!" Emily said brightly.

"Hello, Emily!" he heard his mother say through the phone. "How's my sweet girl?"

"We're going to a wedding," she said. "Not that one, Daddy," she told Derek, shaking her head at a pair of white sandals.

"Today?" Mary asked.

"Yeah, Alex and Izzie are having a wedding. We just gotta find my shoes cause I gotta go down the aisle later."

"Are you the flower girl?"

"Uh huh," Emily nodded. "I practiced with the basket last night, only it didn't have real flowers in it that time."

"Well I'm sure you'll do very well with the real flowers today," Mary said, chuckling a little. "Are Mommy and Daddy in the wedding too?"

"Yeah, but not as big as me," Emily replied with such satisfaction. "Oh, Daddy, those ones!" Emily cried, pointing to a pair of brown leather flip flops that caught her eye nowhere near the small pile of shoes on the floor but hidden under the bed instead.

"Emily," Derek mumbled in frustration, but he got the shoes from under her bed and handed them to her.

He zipped Emily's dress up in the garment bag hanging on the inside of her closet, while Emily asked, "Nana, when are you coming to see me?"

"Soon, I hope, sweetheart."

"Ok, just tell Daddy when you are, 'kay?"

"I will," Mary replied gently. Derek smiled wistfully as he stood by Emily's side, waiting to take the phone back.

"Do you need anything else besides these shoes?" he asked. Emily shook her head no. "Ok, put these other shoes back in your closet, because we're almost ready to leave. Can I have the phone back?"

"Nana?" Emily said. "Daddy wants to talk to you."

"Ok, I'll see you soon, Emily," Mary replied. "I love you."

"Love you too," Emily said, and passed the phone back to Derek.

"Hey, Mom," Derek said, taking the phone back and walking out of the room, back down the hall.

"Why didn't you tell me that Izzie and Alex's wedding was today?" she asked. "I would have made sure to send a gift!"

"I thought I did tell you," he said defensively, although, in all honesty, he couldn't be sure that he did. He was never sure what they talked about anymore. If it wasn't cancer, it just didn't stick in his mind.

"I'll go get them something tomorrow," she said. "Are they registered somewhere?"

"I'm not sure," he replied hastily. "Mom, are you sure everything is ok?"

"Derek, I'm fine," she assured him again. "Can't I call my only son to check in once in awhile?"

"You can, I just wasn't expecting the call," he said, opening the door to their bedroom. "Everything is ok?" he asked one last time.

"Everything is just fine, I promise. Tell me about this wedding."

"I'm not too involved," he said honestly, knocking on the bathroom door to try to get Meredith to hurry up. "I'm in the wedding party, but I think they mostly just needed another guy to go with George for Meredith and Cristina."

"I see. Where are they having the ceremony?"

"Just a local church," he said, perching on the edge of the bed, "And then the reception is at the Archfield Hotel. The rehearsal dinner was beautiful. I'm sure it'll be a great wedding."

"Take some pictures for me," Mary said.

"I'll email you plenty of Emily in the morning," he assured her. "Meredith," he called. "Come on, we're going to be late!"

The door swung open a moment later, and Meredith stood in its frame. Her hair was fully dried and cascaded past her shoulders in loose waves. She wore no makeup and was dressed simply in jeans and a white t-shirt.

He barely looked up and asked, "Are you almost ready?"

"Derek," she said quietly.

When he looked up again, he saw her holding a pregnancy test in her hand. He heard his mother start to tell him a story about one of his nieces, but he immediately stopped listening when he saw Meredith's face split into one of the biggest smiles he had ever seen. It took him a second to register what it meant, but once he did, his heart literally started to pound in his chest with the euphoria of it.

"Mom, I have to call you back," he said abruptly, and barely waited for her reply before he hung up. "Are you serious?" he asked.

"I'm serious," she replied as tears welled up in her eyes.

She was in his arms in a second, drawing his body close to hers and holding him tight. He heard her laugh back a happy sob, and with all the emotions coursing through him now, he could have joined her crying. Excited and relieved, he was shocked at how quickly he became almost intoxicated with the absolute bliss of it.

They broke apart and he kissed her hard on the lips, trying to tell her without words how happy he was. She showed him the test in her hand, and sure enough, there were two dark lines. He kissed her again, his hands cupping her face.

"What happened to not taking a test?" he finally asked.

"I thought about what you said and I just decided to do it."

"Meredith," he sighed. He could barely put a thought together. No sentences, just words. You. Love. Finally. Baby. He kissed her lips, her forehead, her neck and her lips again.

She shrugged happily. "We did it."

"We did it," he agreed. He remembered something about a wedding, something about somewhere they had to be, but he didn't care.

"I'll call my OB on Monday to get a blood test," she said.

"Ok," he breathed happily, the initial shock settling into a warm, contented elation.

"It happened." She sounded so pleased, so shocked, so relieved, so absolutely sated.

"Well, you know," he grinned, "A-plus for effort."

"Shut up," she said, and then quieted for a second. Her big, almost too big, smile tempered a little and for the first time, they both gave themselves a moment to think.

"I don't want to tell anyone yet," she said quietly, bringing him back to reality. He thought of what happened before, and his chest tightened. He saw her point. As much as he didn't want her to be, he knew she was right.

"We won't tell anyone," he agreed.

"Well, Cristina already suspects," she said, and he had to agree there as well. Meredith's refusal of alcohol the night before had definitely tipped her off. "But I don't want to say anything for awhile."

"Just between us," he murmured.

"Yeah. Between us."

They were only fifteen minutes late to the hotel, not enough for Izzie to majorly freak out. He sent Meredith and Emily into the salon, and called his mother back. He let Emily take the fall for his curt hang-up earlier, telling his mother that he found her trying to slide down the banister and had to go quickly before she broke her arm.

Later, as he waited at the front of the church with Alex and George for everything to start, he watched Alex glance around at the priest and at all the people in the pews in front of him. When the music started to play, Alex straightened up, and cleared his throat.

Cristina started down the aisle, and Alex leaned over just barely to Derek and asked, "Dude. Should I be nervous?"

Derek looked to the back of the church. He caught Meredith's eye as she started down the aisle, and she smiled at him, cocking her head just slightly to the side as she clutched her bouquet of calla lilies. He grinned back, never even looked over at Alex, but gave him his answer. "No."

He had to hand it to Izzie; she certainly knew how to throw a party. The reception hall was beautifully decorated with flowers everywhere and soft light that kept the room dimly lit as the sun went down. They could still see the summer evening through the tall windows. Every table was covered with white linen and illuminated with white votive candles encased in glass. Short vases of more white calla lilies stood in the center of each table.

He and Meredith sat back in their chairs as the wait staff cleared their plates away. Alex and Izzie had already done the traditional wedding activities. One of Izzie's nurse friends caught the bouquet, and Alex played along, grinning devilishly as he slipped off Izzie's garter. They smeared a little cake icing on each other's faces, and looked so ridiculously happy doing it that Derek couldn't help but smile.

A few minutes before, the DJ invited everyone onto the dance floor. He grinned as he watched all of their friends and coworkers let loose, happily celebrating with Alex and Izzie. Emily, already feeling pretty proud of herself for getting to sit by herself at a table with other kids, was waving her arms excitedly, dancing with little Tuck amidst all the adults. He knew she had to be running on nothing but adrenaline by now, but she still seemed to be doing ok, laughing when Tuck twirled her around.

Soon enough, the song ended, and the adults all paired off with the first slow notes from a piano. Derek smiled amusedly as Emily and Tuck stopped dancing and regarded each other cluelessly for a minute. He and Meredith actually laughed out loud when they saw Tuck shrug and say something to Emily. The next thing they knew, Tuck and Emily were dancing too. They didn't really know what to do, so they seemed to just be standing there hugging each other, but it was quite cute.

"Want to dance?" he asked, suddenly feeling like he and Meredith were some of the only ones not on the floor.

He led her through the sea of half-empty tables to the dance floor, and pulled her close to him as the song, something soft and true and crooning, swelled into its chorus. He drew her in, his hand on her hip as her arms wrapped around his neck and her fingertips found his hair. He clutched her right hand in his, and they swayed together.

This wedding was very nice, but it couldn't compare to their own. Alex and Izzie's summer ceremony was beautiful, but Derek loved their winter one because it was the way it always was with them-the warmth came from the inside.

These next few months couldn't go by quickly enough. He was excited to do all the things that came with pregnancy, like getting a nursery ready and discussing names, but none of that anticipation could compare to the actual moment. Holding Emily for the first time was one of the most profound, emotional experiences of his life, and right now, nine months seemed like an eternity.

"Are you happy?" she asked him, practically glowing with bliss herself.

"You have no idea."

She kissed him softly, and whispered, "Me too."

It was already perfect. A little fear nagged at him somewhere in the back of his mind, the kind that came when you've already lost something once before, but it couldn't penetrate the almost overwhelming happiness that enveloped his mind and blocked everything else out.

His mind already brimmed with possibilities, and to him, that was practically the best part of it all. For anything else, she might have called him sentimental, even sappy, if he told her everything he was thinking about now. But with the sort of dreamy smile on her face, he could tell she was thinking the same things.

"I can't believe it," she said.

He drew their clasped hands close to their chests, dancing and kissing her like it was their own wedding, and, when their lips broke apart, he simply said, " _I_ can't wait."


	25. You remind me who I am

_You make your way_ _  
_ _You try the best you can_ _  
_ _You remind me who I am_ _  
_ _Your fingers finger into mine_ _  
_ _Holding hands to pass the time_ _  
_ _Because we can_ _  
_ _You remind me who I am_

* * *

A part of Meredith knew that way she was acting was completely irrational. There was no foundation for it in science, no justification for it in medicine. But Derek never fought her on it, and that made her think that maybe she wasn't completely crazy after all, that maybe he was scared too.

She basked in the euphoria of finally being pregnant for two days. But then the worry started to set in, and when Derek casually mentioned something about their upcoming vacation to her, she balked immediately. She told him that she didn't want to go, didn't want to do anything or go anywhere that she didn't absolutely have to. Nothing strenuous, nothing disruptive to routine. She just didn't want to take any chances.

All of a sudden, everything in Meredith's life became about making it to twelve weeks. Twelve weeks meant significantly less chance for miscarriage and an end to the constant fear that everything that happened two years ago could happen again. She hadn't done anything wrong then either, so there was nothing to stop it from happening this time. The ten weeks, three days mark happened to fall on Emily's fourth birthday, and Meredith was grateful for the distraction, anything to make that day go faster, to help her get one day further than she did the last time.

And so they tiptoed through the first few weeks of pregnancy. They already were cleared for a week's vacation at the end of July, but they stayed home, lounging around the house instead of returning to the beach. She wouldn't have even worked if she didn't have to, but at her first OB appointment, her doctor assured her that working was ok, just as long as she didn't overdo it.

Thankfully, the summer passed quietly. When morning sickness set in at six weeks, with a nausea that twisted inside her stomach and didn't leave, her friends gave her concerned looks, but never asked outright what the cause was. Now, on a warm evening in September, the night before Emily started preschool, it had finally started to let up. Still, for weeks, she was hypervigilant, on guard for the slightest twinge of pain that never came. Though she still had 28 weeks to go, she was looking ahead to her 12-week doctor's appointment the next day as a sort of finish line, to the most vulnerable part at least.

While Derek did the dishes downstairs, she found herself upstairs, with her nervous stomach caught in her throat, helping Emily choose an outfit for her first day of school tomorrow. Emily seemed to be experiencing a lot of the same feelings, quietly looking at the contents of her closet with Meredith when she would have normally been excited and participatory.

Meredith pulled out a sleeveless pink cotton dress out of Emily's closet and showed it to her as an option. Emily shrugged and swung her feet back and forth from her place on the bed. Should she have gotten something new for her to wear, Meredith wondered. That's what you did on the first day of school, right? New clothes?

She was about to put the dress back and take a break from wardrobe planning when she heard Derek call up from the kitchen, "Meredith, did we get all this stuff? Tissues and art supplies?"

She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. All what stuff? Emily looked at her blankly and shrugged, and she yelled back, "What?"

"The stuff on this list."

"What list?" she asked.

"The list that her school sent home," he replied. "Could you just come down here for a minute?"

She sighed and left Emily to her own devices upstairs, hoping that she wouldn't find her still perched nervously on the bed when she came back. Downstairs, the kitchen had been cleaned up and the dishes loaded into the dishwasher, and Derek sat at the counter, going through a pile of papers that had been building up over the past few weeks. He had the checkbook out and was paying a few bills, and when she came over, he passed her a piece of paper with the school's letterhead.

In a letter dated August 12, Emily's teacher welcomed them to the school community and detailed what the first week of preschool would be like. She mentioned a few fall holidays in which the school would be closed or on a limited schedule, and reminded them of the option for after-care, since preschool ended at 11:45. And she also included a bulleted list of all the supplies preschoolers should bring with them to the classroom. Crayons, glue sticks, safety scissors, pencils, boxes of tissues for classroom use, and a few other items, none of which they had purchased for Emily.

"Derek, this is the first time I'm seeing this list," she said in frustration.

"It came three weeks ago," he said. "I left it out for you. I figured you'd get the stuff she needs."

"Well I didn't see it," she snapped. "And why couldn't you get it anyway?"

"You're so obsessed with making sure everything is right for this school," he said, his voice rising defensively as she got angry. "I figured you wanted to do it."

"It's tissues, crayons-oh, and glue sticks. You're right, there's no way you could have done this," she said. "Besides, I never saw this list. You did."

"I left it on this counter for you!"

"Well I never saw it!"

He took the list back and looked it over. "I'll get everything tomorrow on the way home from work and she can bring it in on Tuesday."

"No," Meredith said.

"No?"

Meredith thought about Emily, already so nervous, and how she would feel if all the other kids came to school tomorrow prepared and she didn't. She didn't know how she managed to overlook this. Had she been so worried about the pregnancy that she forgot to give this all the attention it deserved? How had they managed to mess this up already, before it even started?

"She's not going in without anything tomorrow," she said.

"It's preschool, not boot camp. I'm sure it's fine."

Meredith shook her head. "She's not going to be that kid."

"What are you talking about?"

"She's not going to be the kid who doesn't have what she needs because her parents forgot to get it." She reached for the paper in Derek's hand and said, "Give me the list, I'll go get everything."

Derek sighed, and his expression softened. He didn't pass the piece of paper back to her. "What time is it?"

"A little after seven," she replied, her voice still very much on edge.

"I'll go out and get as much of it as I can."

"I can go," she said, reaching again for the paper. She started looking around for her keys.

"No, no," he said quickly, trying to calm her down. "Stay here. It's ok. I'll go."

She shot him an incredulous look, and he waved her back upstairs with a reassuring smile. "I promise I'll make it right."

Meredith nodded, and walked him to the door before returning upstairs to Emily. Back in Emily's bedroom, she was pleased to see that Emily had made a little more progress alone in the time she had been downstairs. Some of her dresser drawers were open and in disarray. She had also pulled a few outfits down out of the closet by their hems, leaving the hangers crooked on the rung and the clothes crumpled on the bed and floor.

"Where's Daddy?" Emily asked when Meredith came back alone. She was curled up on her bed, holding her bear.

"He went to get you some things you need for school tomorrow," she said, and motioned to the clothes on the bed, a pair of jean bermuda shorts and a simple gray cotton top. "Is that what you want to wear?"

"Yeah."

"I like it," Meredith said. "Did you pick shoes too?"

"Yeah, those ones," Emily said, pointing to her favorite pair of dark brown leather flip flops.

"Ok," Meredith nodded. She hated to see Emily like this, knowing she was not herself thinking about tomorrow, but for now, she wanted to just make everything seem as normal as possible. She didn't want to make an even bigger deal of it, not wanting Emily to believe it to be a monumental, and thus scary, change. "Let's get your bath," she said, and she started towards the door, motioning for Emily to follow her. "I'll let you stay up until Daddy gets home."

"Mommy," Emily said, her voice wavering a little. Meredith turned back and saw that Emily sat up, but hadn't moved from her spot on the bed. "What's school gonna be like?" she asked.

Meredith went back to Emily's bed and moved her small body over to the side to make room for her to fit on the bed too. She sat down next to Emily and reclined against the pillows and Emily laid against her. At first, Emily's head rested right on her stomach, but after a moment, Meredith eased her up a little. She wasn't showing much, but her usually flat stomach had started to distend a little and she didn't want Emily to know what was going on just yet.

"There will be a lot of toys and games," Meredith said soothingly, running a hand through Emily's hair. "But you'll learn how to do letters and numbers, and you'll do all kinds of other stuff. And there will be circle time."

She didn't know how to convince her that everything was all going to be all right, how to make this easier on her. She wondered briefly what it was going to be like to have two of them to worry about.

"We did circle time at Miss Brenda's," Emily said, looking up at Meredith.

"Yeah, but you'll get to do science too. And this school has a playground, remember?"

"Yeah," Emily mumbled. After she and Derek looked at what felt like a million preschools, they finally settled on one that was downtown, close to Seattle Grace, and part of a larger elementary school. They loved the teachers, and the atmosphere of the school, and when they took Emily to visit over the summer, it seemed like she liked it too.

"It's going to be fun, I promise."

"Ok," Emily sighed. She was quiet for a bit, and then asked, "Are there gonna be a lot of kids there?"

"Yeah, there are going to be about fifteen other kids in your class."

"In preschool with me?"

"Yeah, they're all going to be four years old like you," she said, racking her brain for similarities between daycare and her new school. "There will be naptime like at Miss Brenda's."

"What if I can't sleep?" Emily asked worriedly.

"You can just do quiet time instead."

"Is Ashley gonna be there too?"

"No, Ashley's gonna go to a different school, but you can invite her to play at our house."

"Are you gonna come and get me right at the end?"

"Yes, I promise."

It seemed like the questions continued right into the following morning, and all through breakfast, Meredith tried to answer them as comfortingly and as honestly as she could. Emily wanted to know everything from where the bathroom was to what the other kids' names were.

Derek left soon after breakfast to go to the hospital, with a reassuring kiss on Emily's forehead, promising her that today would be just fine. Meredith didn't have any surgeries scheduled for today and was only going to work a half day, going on the floor only after her OB appointment and leaving early enough to pick Emily up from after-care at 5:00.

By the time Meredith took Emily to school at 8:30, the questions were still coming. They walked through the colorfully-decorated hallways, with Meredith carrying a bag with the required two boxes of tissues and Emily with a new pink backpack on her back, filled with the school supplies Derek got the night before. While they looked for Emily's classroom, Emily tugged on Meredith's hand, stopping her in the middle of the hallway.

"Can I just go back to Miss Brenda's?" she asked.

"No," Meredith said, still trying to remain upbeat. "Since you're a big girl now, you get to go to preschool."

Emily didn't say anything for a moment, and she didn't start walking again either. "I don't wanna go," she finally said, articulating for the first time what she had been beating around the bush about for the past day.

Meredith turned to face her, squatting down so she was at eye-level with her daughter. She put her hands on Emily's hips and pulled her in a little closer. A few parents passed them with their preschoolers and kidnergarteners, and a few older children walked by, all looking for their classrooms.

"Why not?" she asked.

"I just don't."

"It's a little scary, right?" Meredith prompted. Emily nodded. "Cause you don't know what to expect?"

"Yeah," Emily replied nervously.

"I know," Meredith said, folding Emily into her arms for a hug. "It's ok. I'm going to pick you up at the end of the day just like at Miss Brenda's, remember?"

She felt Emily nod against her shoulder and ask, "Is Daddy coming?"

"Daddy has two surgeries today," she replied, pulling back to look Emily in the eye. She knew Derek felt terribly about missing today, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. "I think he said something about taking you for ice cream after dinner though," she said, watching Emily's expression brighten just a little. "He wants to hear all about your day. Would that be ok?"

"Yeah," she replied, a little more happily now.

Emily's classroom was just a few doors down, at the end of the hall. They stopped again outside the door, and Meredith peered in together with Emily. "Remember when we took you here in the summertime? It wasn't too bad, right?"

Emily shook her head, and then looked up at her mother. "Do they still have that sand thing?" she asked. When they took Emily to visit her classroom a few weeks ago, she was very taken with a toy that was essentially a table filled with sand. Her teacher, Miss Norman, a thin woman with curly brown hair who looked to be just a few years out of college, let her play with it for awhile while they talked about what school would be like.

"I think so," Meredith replied, "But we'll have to go in and check."

Emily paused for a second, reconsidering, like she didn't care about the sand table that much after all.

"It's going to be ok," Meredith assured her, waving when Miss Norman saw them in the doorway.

Before they went in, she squatted down again and hugged Emily one more time. "I promise it's going to be ok," she said again. "Would I ever let anything bad happen to you?"

Emily shook her head.

Meredith smiled and, for both of their benefits, after she kissed Emily's forehead, she said, "Let's be brave today."

* * *

The general practice for obstetrics and gynecology at Seattle Grace was far off in the north wing of the hospital, a section of the building Meredith rarely traveled to save for appointments like this one. Derek was supposed to meet her there after spending the morning supervising a junior resident's first discectomy.

She was using the same OB that she used with Emily, a woman about her age named Regina McNally who went to med school at the University of Pittsburgh before finding a job at Seattle Grace. At the moment, Meredith didn't care who was going to take on her case, just as long as they gave her good news.

Derek beat her to Dr. McNally's office; she found him sitting in the waiting room, thumbing through a parenting magazine. When she sat down next to him, he tossed the magazine back onto the coffee table in front of him and asked, "How was Emily?"

She sighed. "We'll see. She's really, really nervous."

"I wish I was there."

"I know. She's excited to hang out with you later."

"Are you ok?" he asked.

"I just want it to be over. And I really have to pee. Ultrasounds suck."

Derek laughed. "It'll be over soon. We're hearing the heartbeat today, just keep thinking about that, and try not to pee your pants."

She laughed, and Derek returned to his magazine while Meredith glanced around the room at all the other patients, most in varying stages of pregnancy. She spent the first thirty-something years of her life thanking God she wasn't one of them, and the last four so grateful that she was. Quietly, in the past week or so, she started to let herself believe that she would be again. In a few minutes she would know for sure.

"Dr. Grey?" a nurse said, sticking her head out from behind the doorway leading to the exam rooms. "You can follow me."

Meredith got up and Derek followed her back into an exam room. He didn't say anything while the nurse took Meredith's height and weight, measured her blood pressure and took a vial of bloodWhen Meredith glanced over at Derek, he had his hands folded in his lap, squeezing them hard. She frowned a little, nervous that he was nervous, and hoped that they could do the ultrasound as soon as possible.

"You can have a seat," the nurse told Meredith. "The doctor will be in in a few minutes."

Meredith sat down on the examination table and leaned back against the light blue plastic, trying not to squirm. Her scrubs caught against the material of the chair and pulled her shirt tight against her body, across her stomach, and while she waited, she regarded Derek.

"I wonder how Emily is," she said.

He looked up and smiled. "No SOS calls yet," he replied. "That's a good sign."

"That was a good preschool, right?"

"Yeah, it was," he assured her. "We looked at about a hundred. It was the best one we saw."

"And she'll like it, right? They did still have that sand table she liked."

He barely missed a beat before he replied, "She might not like it _today_. But I think she will once she gets used to it."

She noticed the pause before he spoke and that worried her. So many more of her decisions as a mother were now about so much more than keeping Emily alive and healthy; she was now making decisions all the time that would determine her happiness, and she didn't want to screw it up for her.

She sighed, and folded her hands over her stomach, a bump that was hardly noticeable. "Twelve weeks," she murmured.

He nodded. "Twelve weeks."

She closed her eyes and rested her head back against the chair. "What's wrong?" he asked.

She exhaled loudly. How to tell him without making him think she was completely out of her mind, worrying so much when there had been not one sign of trouble? "I just need to hear the heartbeat," she said.

He nodded, and dragged his chair across the room to sit next to her. He took one of her hands in his and kissed the top of her head. "It's ok," he whispered, and sat by her for the next few minutes until the doctor came in.

"Hey," Dr. McNally greeted them brightly, knocking on the door as she opened it. She wore a white oxford shirt, an argyle sweater vest, and creased black pants under her lab coat, and her heels clicked on the tile floor as she stepped further into the room. Her black hair was parted on the side and pulled into a tight ponytail, with bangs tucked behind her left ear. "How are we feeling?"

"Good!" Meredith replied, sitting up a little.

"Any morning sickness?"

"It's started getting a little better this week."

The nausea wasn't gone yet, but it had let up considerably within the past ten days or so. Even when it was at its worst this time, she was just thankful that the sight of a scalpel making that initial slice on skin didn't make her sick. She'd taken to eating at the nurses' station because the smells in the cafeteria could make her stomach lurch, but thankfully, it had only been food and smells this time.

"And the Zofran has been helping you?"

"Yeah, it's made it more manageable."

"What about heartburn?" Dr. McNally asked.

"Nothing too bad."

"Well, you've lost three pounds since I last saw you, but that's common," she said, looking over all the notes that the nurse made in Meredith's chart. "As long as you've gained some weight at your 16-week appointment, that's fine.

She continued tracing a finger down Meredith's chart. "Your blood pressure is good-110 over 75-and from looking at you and looking at your chart, I don't expect to see any problems with your urinalysis." She looked up and looked them definitively in the eye and said, "Everything here looks good. I know you had expressed some concerns to me about your history though," she said. "You had a miscarriage two years ago?"

She couldn't help but squeeze Derek's hand at the mention of it. When she answered, "Yes," he squeezed back reassuringly, but she noticed that he was staring intently at the doctor.

Dr. McNally glanced at her chart again. "At ten weeks, three days?"

"Yes."

"Have you had any spotting with this pregnancy?"

"No."

"Any cramping?"

"No."

"We're taking it relatively easy? Drinking plenty of water?"

"Yes."

"Great," Dr. McNally smiled, and after making some notes, she said, "Ok, I'm just going to put the table back a little. Can you lie back for me?"

She did, and pulled her scrub top up, bunching it under her breasts, and pushing the waistband of her pants down to expose more of her abdomen. Her stomach was still tight but bulged out in a small, but hard, bump. She held her shirt in place and caught Derek smiling while Dr. McNally used both hands to poke and prod a bit.

"Your belly's a good size," she said after a moment. "Everything looks good."

"I wasn't showing this much at 12 weeks with my daughter."

"That's normal, you'll get bigger faster this time." Dr. McNally pulled the ultrasound machine closer to them and squirted some clear gel on Meredith's stomach. She turned the machine on and took the doppler in hand, pressing down and sweeping the device over her abdomen. "Let's let you hear the baby's heartbeat, ok?"

Meredith nodded anxiously, and stared intently at the monitor as the black and white images flickered on the screen. Dr. NcNally spent a moment or two looking for the baby, saying nothing, but even she couldn't help but smile when she found the fetus. Meredith looked at the doctor, and wondered for a moment if she smiled every time she did this, and then stared back at the screen.

"There's the baby," Dr. McNally said. "There's the head," she said, pointing to the screen, "And the spine, the arms and legs," she continued, tracing a finger along the screen as she identified each part of the tiny body.

From a profile view, the baby was all head and legs with a tiny nose visible despite the grainy footage. Dr. McNally started taking the necessary measurements, dragging a cursor with one hand from the baby's head to rump while holding the doppler in place with the other. Meredith watched, transfixed, as the doctor flicked on the sound and the steady, yet fast, _boom boom boom_ of a heartbeat filled the room. She felt Derek's hand on her shoulder and his lips on her temple and though neither said anything, she knew he couldn't look away either.

She felt relief start to flood through her, and everything else fell away—how full her bladder was, how much many weeks of worry had built up inside her, none of it mattered in that moment. She knew enough of the basics of obstetrics to know that a heartbeat like that was good and strong. Dr. McNally continued with her measurements, stopping every so often to mark them down in Meredith's chart, but Meredith wasn't paying attention to anything anymore except the screen. She watched the baby flutter around, though she felt nothing inside her, lulled into relaxation at the sound of the baby's heart beating.

Eventually, Dr. McNally turned the sound off and then the machine altogether, and as she wiped the last bits of gel off Meredith's stomach and helped her sit up, she said, "Everything looks perfect."

"Perfect?" Meredith asked hopefully, straightening out her clothes.

"Yep," she replied. "Perfect. Heart beat is 146."

"12 weeks," she sighed with relief.

Dr. McNally nodded. "You're right on schedule, so we're still looking at right around March 22nd for delivery. I'm going to refill your Zofran prescription to get you through any lingering morning sickness, and I'll see you in a few weeks, ok?"

Meredith nodded, and Dr. McNally reminded her to stop by the front desk on her way out to make her next appointments. "And if you need anything before then, just give me a call, but otherwise, I'll see you around 16 weeks!"

After making appointments for 16, 20, 24, and 28 weeks, with another ultrasound scheduled for the 24-week appointment, Meredith and Derek headed back down the hall, back towards the surgical wing to return to work. She was full of plans now, and expectations, yet she felt so much lighter.

"Everything looks perfect," she said, like part of her still couldn't believe it.

"It does," he agreed. "The heartbeat was really strong."

"We can tell people now," she said, before they stepped on the empty elevator.

Derek laughed. "I think everyone already knows."

Meredith frowned, but realized he was probably right. Though no one had said anything to either her or Derek, and true to their word, they hadn't told anyone, gossip spread faster than sickness at Seattle Grace. She had vomited a few times at work, and was starting to look pregnant. She should have known that a few people would have realized and started a quiet discussion on the down-low.

"Officially, then," she said.

"Want to tell Em?" he asked hopefully.

She laughed, and was about to agree, but then stopped to think about what kind of kid she might be getting back later on that evening. Nothing else should change for her today. "Not yet," she replied.

After a quick afternoon at work, Meredith drove the few blocks to Emily's new school, underestimating how long it would take her to get there. This rush-hour traffic would take some getting used to.

She buzzed in through the school's security system and, retracing the morning's steps to find Emily's classroom, Meredith looked around at what they had chosen for Emily. It really was the best place, the only one they felt good about when they came in and when they left. The inside of the building was all bright colors and whimsical decorations, with wall murals and shiny hardwood floors.

The door to Emily's classroom was open, and Meredith didn't make her presence known right away, stopping to watch Emily interact with the few kids who remained for after-care. She was busy playing on a floor mat with a blonde little boy, stacking wooden blocks into an impossibly high tower and instructing the boy on how to do the same. There were only about six or seven kids left in the classroom, as opposed to the fifteen that were there this morning.

Meredith knocked on the door frame after a second, and waved to Emily's teacher, who was busy talking to another parent. When Emily whipped her head around and saw Meredith, her smile crumpled into a frown, and by the time she ran into Meredith's arms, she was crying.

"Mommy!" she sobbed, like she had been separated from her for years.

"Hey!" Meredith said, lifting her up, surprised at how tightly Emily wrapped herself around her body and how fast she went from her normal happiness to a meltdown. "What's wrong? Did you not have a good day?"

"No," Emily said, dragging out the word in a wavering voice. The other children stared at her for a minute, but didn't really pay her much mind, making Meredith think that maybe Emily's wasn't the day's only breakdown.

"No, you didn't have a good day?"

Emily tried to catch her breath, gasping and hiccuping a few times before she replied, "No."

"You _did_ have a good day?"

"Yeah," she replied, lifting her head from Meredith's shoulder, where she'd left a large wet splotch. She held herself up and rubbed her eyes with both hands, but when Meredith tried to put her down, she clenched her legs harder around Meredith's torso.

"That's good, Em! What's the matter?" she asked. She rubbed Emily's back and tried to get her to stop crying, but although Emily had managed to dial it down to just a few whimpers, she couldn't tell Meredith why she was so upset in the first place.

"Hi, Dr. Grey," Miss Norman said, coming over to them as the other mother left with her child. "I just wanted to let you know that Emily did very well today. I'm really looking forward to teaching her this year."

Meredith smiled, and Emily stared at her teacher, clutching Meredith's ponytail in her hand. "Was she like this all day?"

"Oh, no," Miss Norman said sympathetically. "She was happy and playing all day. It can just be stressful for some kids, starting a new school. She hasn't been the only one to react this way at the end of the day."

Meredith adjusted Emily's weight in her arms, and murmured, "Why don't you go get your backpack, ok? We'll go home." Emily nodded and let Meredith put her feet on the floor. She went over to a row of hooks against the far wall, reaching up for her pink bag, on a hook labeled "Emily" in perfect print.

"I don't want you to think she was upset like this all day," Miss Norman continued, reading the expression on Meredith's face that she was trying to hide, the one that must have said quite plainly, 'What the hell did I just do to my child?'

"Even kids who are coming from full-time daycare need a little time to adjust. She really did do just fine," Miss Norman assured her again.

"Ok," Meredith relented. "Please call me if she's not by the end of the week."

Miss Norman smiled sympathetically, and Meredith remembered why she liked her so much in the first place. "Of course," she said.

Emily returned, backpack on her shoulders, though the straps were twisted since this was the first time she put it on without help. Her eyes were still red, but she stopped crying, and didn't ask to be picked up again.

"How about we go see Daddy?" Meredith suggested, and Emily's face broke out into a smile.

By the time they fed Emily dinner, she had calmed down and was actually happy to talk about her day. As it turned out, she did know one of the other children in her class from daycare, though Meredith had never heard Emily mention him before. She seemed to like the other boys and girls, and her report that Miss Norman was "nice like Miss Brenda" was as good as they could have hoped for.

When Derek and Emily left for their promised ice cream date, Meredith found herself opening a door that had been closed for two years, the door to the nursery. The room was situated at the end of the hallway, in between Emily's bedroom and the master bedroom. It a little smaller than Emily's bedroom but perfectly comfortable albeit a total blank slate, with a double closet and hardwood floors to match the rest of the house. Meredith pulled up the blinds to the double window and orange and pink light from the sunset cascaded over the spectacular view of the woods and into the room, filling it up.

She looked around at all the boxes that had built up over the past two years among the baby furniture they moved in here when they bought Emily a bed. They were mostly her boxes from when she moved her things out of her mother's house, miscellaneous items that never made it to the attic for whatever reason, and since neither of them ever went in this room, they simply sat here collecting dust. Meredith swept a finger over one of the boxes and wiped the thin layer of dust on her pants. She started to pull the boxes open, one at a time, just to see what was inside. Med school textbooks, clothes she forgot she had, novels she never had time to read, memorabilia and childhood knickknacks, tiny onesies and dresses from Emily's infancy-all stacked by the boxful around the white crib and changing table, in the center of a stark white room that was supposed to be painted later.

She started pushing the boxes to the side, trying to clear some floor space so they could see what they were working with. When they moved in four years ago, she didn't want to bother with any of the spare rooms, partly because they were going to have a newborn in a few weeks and it was enough of a project getting that room and the rest of the house done, but partly because she wanted to just wait and see what came. Eventually, Derek convinced her to turn one of the five bedrooms into a guest room and office, but this one and one other were never used. When she thought about it before, it seemed wasteful to have so much empty space, but today, the house felt suddenly fuller. This room would be someone's soon.

She heard Derek and Emily come home as she was finishing pushing the boxes to one side, next to the closet, and she started to move the crib to one corner when Derek walked in the open door. Wordlessly, he helped her push the piece of furniture to the corner, and when she started on the changing table and the rocking chair, he simply moved as she moved.

They stood in the center of the room, the last of the light flooding in and surrounding them, and they looked around at the space. Already, she was wondering when they could paint and get rid of the white, when they could fill it with blankets and pictures and make it a part of home.

He wrapped his arms around her from behind, folding them gently across her stomach as his chin found the dip in her shoulder. She grinned as she closed her hands over his, and said only, "We have a lot of work to do."


	26. I'd never leave you, no, I never would

_Sometimes I forget to love you like I should  
But I'd never leave you; no, I never would  
_

* * *

The general surgeons had their hands full today, with a board full of accidental injuries, and gurneys rolling through the hallways in all directions. Meredith didn't quite understand why, but it never failed; Halloween always proved to be extremely hectic.

Meredith stood at the nurses' station, trying to schedule a craniotomy to remove her patient's malignant brain tumor, when Dr. Bailey set a huge pile of charts down on the counter next to her. She looked harried, like she hadn't gotten a minute to herself for several hours, even though it was only nine in the morning. Meredith wasn't on the board at all today, but she was sure she had seen Bailey's name there at least twice.

"I've always said it," Bailey grumbled, "Halloween is the busiest day of the year."

"Yeah, well, let's hope nobody blows their head off today," Meredith replied, waiting for Debbie to find a time for her patient's surgery within the next few days.

"Lost your zest for the scalpel, Grey?"

Meredith smiled and shook her head. "Emily's Halloween show at school. She's one of the black cats. I think there are three of them."

Bailey nodded, and told her quite simply, "Don't miss it."

"Derek and I are leaving soon," she assured her. In moments like these, she wondered why they didn't talk about their kids more, why she didn't ask Bailey more questions. She knew what she wanted to say-How are you doing this? Am I doing this right?-though she wasn't sure how the words would come out, when her pager buzzed and beeped loudly against her hip.

She sighed and reached over the counter for the phone, dialing down to the ER. She waved a hasty goodbye to Bailey, and when someone picked up on the other end of the line, she said, "This is Dr. Grey."

"Dr. Grey, this is Hailey, down in the ER. We need you for a consult, guy accidentally stabbed his hand trying to carve a jack-o-lantern. It's not bleeding much, but he pulled the knife out on his own so we just need to make sure he's ok before we stitch him up."

She checked her watch, and realized that she had some time before they had to leave. "Ok, I'll be right down."

Derek caught her on her way to the elevator, rushing in the opposite direction like he was trying to finish a day's work in three hours. "We'll leave in about a half-hour?" he asked her in passing.

"Yeah, I just have to do a consult real quick in the ER. Halloween," she sighed. "It's just a small stab wound; it won't take long. But go ahead without me if I'm not in the lobby in 20 minutes. I'll meet you there. You have the camera?"

"Yeah," he assured her. "See you in a bit."

One look at Jake Cressman's hand told her that this wasn't just a stab wound. He'd somehow put the wide side of a butcher knife clean through his hand, trying to gouge out a particularly tough piece of pumpkin in order to make the world's most awesome jack-o-lantern for his girlfriend. In his shock, he pulled the knife out at home and wrapped the wound in a towel, and now he had a neurosurgeon and a general surgeon staring at it, trying to figure out how to fix it.

An hour ticked by while they waited for his scans to come back and Meredith tried to find anyone at all to pass this case on to. She didn't normally harbor ill will towards patients, but she wouldn't have minded if an intern did his nerve repair and lost him partial function of his hand for what it was costing her to do this surgery.

"This better have been one hell of a pumpkin, Mr. Cressman," she said with as much cheerfulness as she could muster 90 minutes after he came in as the anesthesiologist was about to put him under. They were a half hour into Emily's Halloween show that Derek got to see and she didn't, all because this guy decided he had to be freakin' Picasso with his pumpkin.

A surgery just long enough to take away her chance to see her daughter's first school activity. That's how she would remember this patient, she thought to herself as she quickly filled out Jake Cressman's post-op chart. He'd have most of his hand function back after physical therapy.

Her pager beeped again, with a number she didn't recognize this time. When she called it back, a voice answered that sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place how she knew it.

"Hi, this is Dr. Grey. I was paged?"

"Dr. Grey, yes, this is Mrs. Halifax calling from Emily's school."

Meredith froze for a second. What had Emily done for the principal to already be calling her parents at work?

"Yes, hi, what can I do for you?"

"We just wanted to make sure you knew that we were closing early today."

"Yes," Meredith replied. "Did the show run late or something? I thought the day was over at noon."

"It was, but we were wondering if you made alternate arrangements for Emily's care today. The other children have been picked up already."

She checked the clock at the nurses' station, just to make sure she had the right time. They were both taking a half day today, and Derek should have already picked Emily up and taken her home to get ready for trick-or-treating that night.

"My husband should be there," she said.

"I'm sorry, he's not here, Dr. Grey."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Norman brought Emily to my office after the show," Mrs. Halifax continued. "We haven't seen him. We just wanted to call and make sure everything was all right. Perhaps you were going to have a babysitter pick Emily up today?"

"No, no," Meredith said, dragging the phone, cord and all, across the hall to the surgical board. She scanned the list of names, and saw a recently erased slot that was filled in with Derek's name and an emergency craniotomy listed as the procedure. She didn't even care to look to see who the patient was. She simply sighed and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips in frustration. How the hell did they let this happen?

"We were supposed to be there, but I got called into surgery on a consult that was only supposed to take a minute and my husband apparently got called in as well. Halloween's a busy day at the hospital. You wouldn't think it would be, but it is. Lots of weird injuries, so busy time for surgeons," she stopped herself then, realizing she was rambling, and said, "I'll be right there."

The school's hallways were still relatively quiet since the older grades were still in session for a few more hours. The main office was one of the first doors from the entrance, a large bright room with a desk for a secretary and some office equipment, and a closed door leading to the principal's private office. Emily sat at a spare table with her back to Meredith, busily coloring and still wearing her costume. She was dressed all in black, so as to meet the requirements of a spooky cat, and had her hair in French-braided pigtails, but had taken her headband of cat ears off and laid it on the table next to her.

Mrs. Halifax, who she had only met once back when they were considering this school for Emily, was seated at the opposite end of the table, facing the door. Meredith knocked on the door's frame, and announced herself with an apologetic hello. Emily's head whipped around at the sound of her mother's voice. Her disappointed glare and the smeared cat whiskers on her cheeks, which Meredith had drawn that morning with black eyeliner, did not go unnoticed.

"I'm so sorry about this," Meredith said to the principal, who nodded in understanding. "My husband and I had a miscommunication. Regular hours on Monday?"

"It's ok, this happens from time to time," Mrs. Halifax said, standing up and gathering Emily's bag and coat for her. "Miss Norman would have stayed with her but she had an appointment this afternoon. And yes, we have regular hours on Monday."

"Ok," Meredith replied, taking Emily's things. "Again, I'm so sorry to inconvenience you. Ready to go, Em?"

Emily nodded, but didn't take Meredith's hand when she extended it. They walked silently out of the school, Emily dragging her feet and Meredith holding Emily's things limply in her hand. They had a little over a block to walk to the meter where Meredith parked.

"You missed my show," Emily murmured sullenly as soon as they got outside. "And Daddy missed it too."

Meredith's heart sank to hear how disappointed she sounded. She knew that she let her daughter down, knew exactly how this felt to her, only now she was seeing it from the other side. She knew she had a legitimate excuse, but she also knew that it didn't matter to Emily.

"I know," she replied. "Em, I am so sorry. I wanted to be there so much, but-"

"You said you were coming," Emily interrupted angrily, looking up at her.

Again, there was nothing Meredith could say but, "I know."

"You said," Emily repeated, both syllables feeling like short, swift twinges in Meredith's gut.

"I know I did. I'm so sorry I missed your show. Daddy is too. I wanted to see you so much."

"Then why didn't you?"

How to explain when she knew Emily didn't care about the explanation? How to justify it when even she didn't feel like there was cause for justification?

"We just had people who needed our help," she said helplessly. "I'm sorry."

"No, you're not," Emily shot back, much louder this time, almost screaming it at her. She took off running down the street, and for a split second, Meredith remembered screaming once herself and wanting nothing more than to be away, away, away, anywhere but with _her_.

They only had a half a block to go before they hit the street corner, and Meredith sprinted after Emily, weaving through the other pedestrians to catch up to her daughter. She couldn't believe how good Emily had gotten at running away.

"Emily!" Meredith cried, catching up to her and grabbing her arm before she ran out into the street. She pulled her back firmly onto the sidewalk, and steered her down the side street where she parked the car. Emily saw the car, just three spots ahead of the corner, and walked a body's length apart from Meredith.

"You're not sorry," she said. It was the first time she ever heard what bitterness sounded like in Emily's voice.

"I am," Meredith replied earnestly. "I'm so sorry."

They stopped in front of their car, and Emily looked up at her with such disappointment in her eyes and said, "Everybody else's mom and dad were there. But you weren't."

"Em, I-"

"You forgot me."

"I didn't forget," she replied immediately. "I just had-"

"Stop, Mommy!" Emily cried, and when Meredith tried to touch her arm, tried to hug her and calm her, to literally get down on her knees and apologize, Emily shrieked, "STOP!"

Meredith was at a total loss, watching her child stand there with her fists clenched and her face bright red, screaming and crying, all because of something she did. She rubbed her forehead with one hand, and stood there for minute or two, feeling the heated glances of strangers passing by, wondering what had been denied this child to make her behave this way. She didn't even feel right in scolding her for her tantrum. She wanted desperately to hold Emily, though she knew it would only make her worse. Finally, when Emily had exhausted herself and, though she was still crying, had stopped screaming, Meredith opened the car door. Emily kicked once halfheartedly when Meredith picked her up under her armpits, but otherwise didn't fight when Meredith silently put her in her carseat and buckled her in.

Emily raged the whole way home, alternating between loud sobbing and exhausted whimpering, but said no actual words to Meredith. Meredith was wracked with guilt, and as the ride wore on and Emily kept crying, her eyes filled with tears as well. Wiping them away as she navigated the road home, she couldn't remember a time when she felt more ordinary.

Emily wouldn't talk to her, but didn't fight her, when Meredith sat her on the counter in the bathroom and wiped away the smeared makeup. At first she tried to keep talking, but Emily would either shrug or answer her questions with as few words as possible, and so Meredith let her be for awhile.

When Derek came home as soon as his surgery was over, the stress of having a four-year-old giving her the silent treatment got the better of Meredith. She didn't care how his surgery went, or what his patient needed, or what her patient needed. The only question she was trying to answer was why they weren't there for Emily. Derek, of course, had no idea what she was talking about, but quickly understood how badly they messed up when Meredith couldn't stop herself from crying in the retelling of it, of Emily's screaming and then her silence.

The silence continued well into the evening, despite the time that Derek spent upstairs with Emily, where he promised Meredith that he tried to explain to her that it was an accident and they were both very sorry. But for all his explanation, Emily wasn't having it. Later that night, they took her to Alex and Izzie's neighborhood to trick-or-treat, still dressed as a black cat, but with her makeup redone, as they walked around Meredith's childhood neighborhood and returned afterward to Meredith's childhood home. At brief points throughout the night, Emily would forget that she was mad and be back to her old self, but when she remembered, she was right back to being sullen and angry.

At Alex and Izzie's house, after trick-or-treating, Cristina, Izzie, and Meredith sat at the kitchen counter while Derek, George, and Alex sat with Emily at the dining room table so she could spread out her candy and Alex and George unwrapped the leftovers from what they were giving out. Beers were served all around, and while everyone else chatted, Meredith couldn't help but focus on Emily.

"Look how much candy I got!" Emily exclaimed, after she dumped her bag and spread the mini chocolate bars and boxes of sweets out across the table.

"That's awesome, Em!" Meredith said. Emily's expression changed immediately to a scowl, forgetting her glee at having so many treats all to herself.

"So, how are you feeling?" Izzie asked Meredith delightedly. They told everyone at work about the baby a month ago, and Izzie, as predicted, had freaked out. Of course, she did already know, or at least suspect, she told Meredith hastily, but she was so excited.

"Hey, squirt, I'll trade you," Alex said, offering Emily one of the leftover mini Milky Way bars in their bowl.

Meredith watched Emily take and unwrap the small piece of chocolate while Derek inspected all her collected candy to make sure it was ok. She popped it in her mouth and smiled, and Meredith fell a little bit more in love with her and felt, if possible, even more guilty. Emily didn't ask for much. She had always demanded very little of them, and rarely complained about her long weeks in preschool and daycare. And, most importantly, she didn't ask for any of this. This lifestyle wasn't her choice, and Meredith knew that whether Emily realized it or not, she paid the price for it along with her parents. For a second, she found herself hoping that Emily would become anything but a doctor.

Izzie said Meredith's name and brought her back to attention, making her remember that she had been asked a question. "What?" she said. "Oh, um, good."

"Isn't it weird to think in couple of months, you'll have another one running around?"

Weird. Overwhelming. Terrifying.

"Yeah, it is," she replied.

"I brought up kids the other day to Alex," Izzie mused. "He kinda freaked out at first-you know how he is-but then we actually, you know, talked about it. After we've both settled into our fellowships, we're going to start trying."

Meredith mustered up the best smile she could, not wanting to scare Izzie with how hard it really was, how much sacrifice it really would take from both of them. "That's great, Iz."

"Yeah," Izzie smiled, as Cristina took a pull of her beer. She was dating someone now, a pulmonologist, but it was still new, nowhere serious enough to have that conversation, even if she was that kind of person.

"Is Emily excited about the baby?" Izzie asked.

"She's," Meredith trailed off, trying to find the words. They told Emily soon after they made the announcement to their friends, and Meredith was still trying to work out how Emily felt about it. She wasn't joyful, but she didn't cry or get upset. She didn't really do much of anything, Meredith realized; her reaction to the news was entirely anticlimactic, nothing of what Meredith expected at all. "She's something. I don't know if she's excited yet."

"How did you tell her again?"

"We kind of just sat her down and told here that we were having a new baby in a few months, and my stomach was going to get bigger because that was where the baby was growing," Meredith replied. "I had this doll when I was a kid-Anatomy Jane-you can kind of pop off her stomach and see all her internal organs, and it has parts to simulate pregnancy, so we dug that out and tried to show her."

"Well, what did she say?"

"She was just kind of like, 'Ok,'" Meredith said, as nonchalantly as Emily had.

"That's it?" Cristina asked incredulously.

"I know, right?" Meredith said. "I was expecting a little more too. She sounded a little worried when we told her that the baby was going to come live with us. But she really didn't ask any questions about it; she just kind of sat there. And then she asked to go back to playing."

Meredith was completely blindsided by it, and Derek definitely seemed surprised as well. She really tried to prepare for this moment, and how to help Emily adjust. She read freakin' pregnancy and parenting guidebooks about it. And Emily had completely thrown her for a loop by failing to properly acknowledge it and react at all. They told her over two weeks ago, and she really hadn't asked many questions or talked about it since then.

"It's probably just a lot for a little kid," Izzie assured her. "Just keep talking about it. She'll come around."

Emily went to bed angry. She let Meredith hug her and kiss her goodnight, but only because Meredith was there, not because she was sought out. Emily didn't return the gesture, for either parent, and Meredith could tell that all was not forgiven. Disheartened, Meredith left her room with Derek, but they didn't even make it past the bottom of the staircase before Meredith's guilt and remorse got the better of her.

"I can't believe I let this happen," she said, pushing her hair off her face with both hands.

She felt Derek's hand on her lower back, and when she looked at him, she saw only sympathy in his eyes, not fear. "Meredith, it could happen to anyone," he assured her. "It was a misunderstanding."

She realized then that this did not mean to him what it meant to her. In his mind, it wasn't the symbol of something much larger, it wasn't the start of a trend; it was simply something unfortunate that should have been avoided but wasn't.

"It didn't happen to anyone else in her class," Meredith said. She tried to keep her voice down, so that Emily wouldn't think that not only was she forgotten, but she was also the reason for her parents' argument. "It only happened to Emily. We were the only ones who weren't there."

"I know," he replied, with noticeable regret in the tone of his voice. "Believe me, I hate that we missed this."

"There won't be another one."

"I know. But Emily knows we didn't mean to miss it."

"No, she doesn't," Meredith cried, her emotions raging. When you're four and five years old, you don't understand misunderstandings. All you know is what's right before you-that your parents weren't there when they said they would be. "You should have paged me," she said. "To tell me you were going into surgery. You should have told me."

"What would you have done, Meredith?" Derek asked softly. She hated when he tried to keep her calm, or made her try to see reason. "Walk out in the middle of your surgery?"

Meredith paused to consider what she knew she wouldn't have been able to do. For a second, she saw herself walking out of the OR with a man still anesthetized and on the table. It seemed almost surreal. She could have never done it.

"No," she admitted. "But I could have tried to find someone to take over. Or I could have sent someone," she cried. " Anyone who Emily knows and wasn't busy. Someone could have been there."

"Emily didn't want someone," Derek said. "She wanted us."

He tried to hug her, but she pushed him away. She deserved to feel this guilt and remorse, not to be comforted. "Well, at least she wouldn't have been all by herself thinking we forgot about her."

"She wanted us," he repeated. "She still would have thought that."

"One of us-both of us-should have been there then," Meredith said, some of Emily's anger bubbling up inside of her, "Like we said we would be!"

"Are you mad at me?" Derek asked. He didn't get defensive or try to shirk the blame; he simply wanted to know.

Her eyes brimmed with tears. "No, I'm mad at _me_. And Emily's mad at me." She wiped a few tears away, and asked helplessly, "Why isn't she mad at you?"

"She was. She is," he said. "We talked about it earlier. She wanted us to be there and we screwed it up." In that moment, he sounded just as helpless as she did. "She knows it was an accident."

She didn't believe him. If he could have seen Emily earlier, flushed with tears and screaming, he wouldn't think that Emily knew they didn't mean it.

The baby fluttered gently inside of her, as if to remind her that it was there. The first time she felt it, a few days ago, she was in surgery, and it took her by such surprise that she almost dropped her scalpel and laughed out loud. It was doing it all the time now, and Derek started to joke that the baby was going to feel left out if he didn't come up with a nickname equivalent to 'Bean' soon. Derek wasn't able to feel it yet, even though her stomach had definitely popped, but the baby was constantly making itself known to Meredith. While she normally smiled when it did, enjoying these private moments between her and the baby, in this moment the reminder of its presence was another source for fear.

"How are we going to do this when there's two of them?" she asked.

"I don't know."

It wasn't exactly the reassuring answer she was looking for. All of a sudden, the balance she thought they'd struck seemed so out of whack. "Emily didn't ask for any of this."

"Meredith," he said gently. He touched her cheek gently with his fingertips, and smiled at her. She let him hug her this time, pulling her into his arms. "You're doing everything you can," he whispered.

"That's what I'm afraid of," she said. She sighed as she pulled away, and sat down on the bottom step. With her elbows on her knees, she put her head in her hands, changing position only slightly once to wipe her eyes. Derek sat down next to her, and wrapped his arm around her waist, rubbing her back a little.

"You didn't see her earlier, the way she looked at me," Meredith told him. "She was _screaming_ at me. She was so angry, because of me."

"Because of us," he corrected, refusing to let her take all the blame for this.

"Yeah, because of us. I mean she's gotten mad before," Meredith said. "She's thrown plenty of tantrums if she didn't get a cookie after dinner or if we made her go to bed when she didn't want to or something. But this was different. She was furious. And you know what? I can't blame her."

"No, me either."

She hated what this day brought out in her daughter, hated even more that they were the reason for it. Derek was seeing some of the things she was seeing in Emily-first bitterness, first profound disappointment, first lingering anger. But he wasn't seeing so many other things-fighting, getting careless with boys, pink hair, downing tequila, keeping secrets, feelings of inadequacy and being ordinary that would linger well into adulthood. How early could she trace them back?

"I was always afraid I'd do this to her, Derek. And it's going to happen again, chances are."

She had to be realistic. Once she saw how easy it was for it to happen today, she knew that sometime between now and Emily's high school graduation, she would not be there for something else important. She could maybe look forward to fewer hours as she gained seniority, but the patients would always keep coming, pulling her away from her family. It was like fighting a losing battle and, in an instant, she understood something a little more.

"I never believed her," she said.

"Who?"

"My mother. She used to do this to me all the time. She always said she couldn't get away. And I never believed her."

"You're not her," Derek said quietly. "You're not. You try so hard. She didn't."

"Yeah," Meredith said noncommittally. "I remember wanting her to try harder, but then I just gave up. After awhile, I didn't care if she tried or not."

She stood up, putting her hand on Derek's knee and using him for leverage. She turned to go back upstairs, and he asked, "Where are you going?"

"I don't want Emily to give up."

"Em?" Meredith said softly, knocking on Emily's closed door. She knew they hadn't left her long enough for her to be asleep yet. "It's Mommy. Can I come in?"

"Ok," Emily replied.

When Meredith pushed open the door, she found Emily sitting up in bed, with all the covers kicked off. Her long-sleeved purple pajamas exposed her wrists and ankles, and Meredith made the mental note that she was growing and would need new sleepwear for the winter.

"Can I sit?" Meredith asked, feeling a little strange to actually feel nervous right now.

Emily nodded and Meredith perched on the edge of the bed, close to where Emily sat, but she didn't touch her. " I want to talk to you about what happened earlier today," she said. "I want to know how you felt when Daddy and I missed your Halloween show."

"Sad," Emily replied immediately. "And mad. And more sad."

"Why did you feel sad and mad?"

"Cause you forgot to come to my show cause of the dumb hospital."

Meredith was going to explain again that they didn't forget, and that she and Derek had a misunderstanding, but she knew it didn't matter. Emily only had three lines in her show this afternoon, but she wanted her parents to hear them and they didn't. It didn't matter what the reason was.

"I know," Meredith replied, owning their mistake.

"And you said you would."

"I know."

Emily's bottom lip trembled, and her breaths came heavier and more quickly. She burst into tears, and curled herself up into a ball, drawing her knees close to her chest. She buried her face in the space between her knees, and said, in muffled words, "And there were orange cupcakes after and you didn't get one of those either. And all the other moms did. And they had pumpkin faces on them."

"I know."

Emily looked up at her with tears in her eyes. "If you know, then how come you did it?"

"I don't know why it happened," Meredith admitted.

"You're just gonna forget me," Emily said, in a resigned way like she had already accepted it as fact.

"What?" Meredith asked, genuinely taken aback. "Em, we would never forget you."

"Yeah, cause of the dumb baby and the dumb hospital," Emily said, her voice wavering. Her tears kept coming as she told Meredith what she'd probably been thinking about all day. "Cause babies need mommies more than kids do, and sick people have to have surgeries. But I don't."

Meredith's heart sank, and she wondered if Emily had been worried about the baby from the beginning, or if it was something she considered a contributing factor to today's debacle. Either way, she acutely understood what it felt like to feel like you were the last priority, even in your own family. It was something she never wanted for her daughter.

"Can I tell you something?" Meredith asked. "I know how you feel."

She put her hand on Emily's back, and took it as a good sign that Emily didn't immediately shrug her away.

"My mom was a surgeon too, and she used to miss things all the time. And I hated it, because all the other kids had moms who came to stuff, but I didn't."

"Really?"

Meredith and Derek didn't really talk about Ellis much (or Thatcher ever), preferring instead to focus on Derek's family and the much happier, more normal stories there. Once or twice, Emily asked where Meredith's mommy was, they just told her that she died a long time ago, and that was that. Meredith never planned to tell Emily, at least until she was much older, any of the details of her past and how borderline-scary screwed up she used to be.

"Really. It used to make me so mad, so I know that you're mad now. And you should be, because we messed up," Meredith said.

She had her hand in Emily's hair now, running her fingers through her dirty blonde locks. Her curls were starting to unwind a little as she got older, forming loose waves instead of the more defined big ringlets she had during her toddler years. Emily was starting to lean into her, or at least close the gap between them.

"I look at you and I want to do everything right for you," Meredith said. "I never, ever want to hurt you, and I know I did that today. I love you more than anything else in the world. So much more than the hospital, even though it didn't seem like it today."

"Promise?" Emily asked earnestly.

"Yeah, I promise," Meredith assured her. "And just because a new baby is coming doesn't mean I'm going to be any less there for you. The baby will need me and Daddy a lot, but we are not going to forget about you. We know you need us more than the hospital does, and just as much as the baby. We're going to try harder."

Emily looked up at her with so much trust in her eyes, like she believed that it would be ok just because Meredith said so. Meredith never wanted Emily to look at her any other way.

"I'm so sorry, Em," she said again.

Emily leaned fully into Meredith, letting her embrace her completely for the first time all day. Meredith kissed the top of her forehead. Emily sighed, and repeated a phrase that Meredith and Derek often told her when she spilled something or during the long weeks of potty training: "Accidents happen, Mommy."


	27. Through the years we all will be together

_Through the years, we all will be together, if the fates allow_ _  
_ _Hang a shining star upon the highest bough_ _  
_ _And have yourself a merry little Christmas now_

* * *

"Are we almost there?"

Emily's voice rang out nervously from the backseat of their rented sedan. Derek usually preferred his cars to have a little more character, but the rental selection at the Stamford airport left something to be desired, and at least this car had snow tires.

"Yeah, almost," he replied. Glancing at her through the rearview, he saw her with her legs crossed on her booster seat, and he wondered why she insisted that she didn't have to go to the bathroom, not even enough to try, when their flight landed about an hour earlier. It was late afternoon, and it was starting to get dark.

"When?" she whined.

"Soon, Bean," he promised.

"I gotta go pee!"

"Hey, Em, pass me your water," Meredith said. He smiled amusedly as she turned around and took the plastic bottle from Emily. Over the past few months, if Emily had to pee in the car, she had developed the habit of actually drinking more and thus making the situation even worse. The longer she had to wait, the more panicky she got as she worried that she might not be able to hold it.

"Ok, well we're almost there," Derek assured her from the driver's seat as they entered Derek's childhood neighborhood, with white colonial houses on either side of the street. Patches of snow dotted the grass on each lawn, remnants from a storm earlier that week that had since mostly melted away. "Can you wait five more minutes?" he asked. "Because that's how long it's going to take to get to Nana's house."

He turned down a side street and, after a block and a half, he pulled up to the curb behind a red minivan that was dingy with remnants of an earlier snowfall. There was another minivan in the driveway, boxing in a black Honda. A single candle in each window of the white two-story New England style house lit up the darkening outside, and light poured out of the entire downstairs. Some of his sisters had beaten him here, and the other two would probably be arriving shortly.

He parked, and opened Meredith's door, helping her out first, and then opening Emily's door. She had already unbuckled herself and sprung out as soon as the door opened.

"You ok, Em?" he asked, laughing a little.

"Daddy!" she whined. "Don't!"

"Ok, come on."

The front door of the house had swung open, and he saw his mother standing in front of the plate glass storm door. Although they talked at least once every few days, he hadn't actually seen her in months. After the delay when her ANC count plummeted, she finally finished her treatment a few weeks ago. Her head was still wrapped in a scarf, but she didn't look as thin as she did before, or as exhausted and frail. Instead, she was smiling, waving, and she held the door open for them as they climbed up the steps.

"Derek!" she exclaimed, kissing him on the cheek. "Meredith, oh my, you look good! I'm glad you were able to come out."

"Yeah, well, another week and a half and I don't think we would have made it!" Meredith said.

She stepped inside and let Mary get a good look at her stomach. With her due date coming up in late March, they weren't sure if they'd be able to fly by Christmas. However, at their 5-month appointment, Derek made sure to clear this trip with their OB-GYN, and she said that as long as it wasn't an extended trip, and as long as this was the last trip until after the baby was born, it would be all right.

"Well, we're glad that you did," Mary said, pulling Meredith into a hug, and then ushering her inside, away from the cold. "Hi, sweetheart!" she said, turning to Emily.

"Nana, I gotta go to the bathroom," Emily blurted out, before Mary could say or do anything more.

"Oh! Ok, well come in, come in!" she said hastily. "Maggie, Annie, and the kids are here already. Everybody else is coming for dinner."

The house was exactly the way he remembered it as a child—hectic, kind of loud, warm, bright. Some of his sisters' kids ran through the hall, Maggie's Will riding piggyback on Annie's Claire and her sister Audrey following close behind. With one more quick lap around the first floor, they were back in the foyer in no time. Meredith ushered Emily around the corner and into the powder room adjacent to the kitchen while the rest of the kids poured in to the foyer to say hi.

"Uncle Derek!" four or five of them yelled together, bypassing Mary and surrounding him with hugs.

"Uncle Derek, Uncle Derek," Maggie's oldest, Ben, cried. "Will you play football with us? The girls won't play!"

"Hey, buddy! Yeah, I'll play in a little bit."

"Hey, Derek!" Maggie said. She was the smallest of the Shepherd children, standing a good six inches shorter than her brother. She made her way through the sea of kids, hugged him, and then looked around and asked, "Where's Meredith and Emily?"

"Right here," Meredith announced, bracing a relieved-looking Emily in front of her with a hand on each shoulder and holding both of their coats under her arm. "We needed a pit stop."

"Wow! Meredith, look at that belly!"

"Yeah, tell me about it!" Meredith laughed. After five years, Derek was amazed at Meredith's ability to just blend into the Shepherd craziness. She hadn't even been here five minutes, and she was already surrounded by eight kids, only one of them her own, and half of Derek's family. And she looked calm. The first time he brought her here, he could have never imagined it.

"Meredith!" Annie said, coming downstairs with little Ian on her hip. "Did you just get here? Sorry, diaper change."

"Yeah, about five minutes ago. Hi, Annie," she said, letting Derek's sister hug her tightly with her free arm.

She hugged Derek too, and then turned back to Meredith and asked, "How do you feel?"

"Good. A little tired, but good."

It was the understatement of the year. He didn't remember Meredith being this exhausted when she was pregnant with Emily. It all hit her within the past two weeks, but since then, she was barely making it until 10 at night before she had to go to bed, and every day off, he could count on her taking a pretty substantial afternoon nap. The other day, he wanted to eat lunch with her, but couldn't find her until Cristina let him know that she was taking a power nap in the on-call room and should not be woken up unless a patient was actually dying.

When he asked her about it, she assured him that she was fine, really, and she promised that she would tell him if she was in pain or if it was too much. When he tried to argue with her, she told him that of course she was more tired now than she was when she was pregnant with Emily, what with the additional child that she was already taking care of, the additional surgeries she was performing to get ready to sit for her boards in a few months, and the additional piles of reading material stacked by her bedside that she needed to study for the test. He let it go, but if he had his way, he would make her start her maternity leave now.

"Do we know if I'm getting a niece or a nephew?" Maggie asked.

"Your brother thinks that it's life's one real surprise," Meredith scoffed. "So no, we're not sure. Emily, do you remember Aunt Annie and Aunt Maggie?"

Emily nodded, excited to see all the kids around her, ready to play. "Hi."

"Hi, honey!" Annie said. "All the kids are going outside to play if you want to go too. Ok, everybody, let's put our coats on and go outside," she said cheerfully but forcefully, and Derek smiled, wondering how long they had all been running amok inside. "Lauren, do me a favor, keep an eye on the little kids?" she asked her oldest, a thirteen-year-old with the same curly hair of her mother's and a mouthful of braces.

"Mom!" Lauren cried, indignant at having just been volunteered for babysitting duty.

"I'll be out in a minute, Lauren," Derek promised. "I owe these guys a football game."

"Just for a little bit, Laur, so we can talk with Uncle Derek and Aunt Meredith," Annie assured her. She opened the hall closet and started passing coats out one by one until she got to Ian's. She passed her youngest son to Maggie, who held him while Annie put a coat and hat on him. She passed him to Lauren, who set him down on the floor, held his hand, and started leading him to the back door.

Emily looked up expectantly at Meredith, and Meredith asked, "You want to go outside?" Emily nodded excitedly, and Meredith helped her put her coat back on and sent her towards the back door with the rest of the kids.

Mary started to usher all the adults in towards the living room, but Maggie went the other way, towards the kitchen, and announced, "I'm going to put a pot of coffee on."

The Christmas tree was in the same place it had been all his life, in the corner of the living room opposite the wood-burning stove. The stockings he and his sisters had used since childhood were hung up on the wall between them, and he couldn't help but notice some of the familiar ornaments on the tree as well. They all took a seat on the leather sectional that wrapped around the room, he and Meredith in one corner, and Mary and Annie opposite them.

The stove was on, and the room was comfortably warm, but when Annie asked if Mary wanted a blanket, she took it from her. It was in the little things like this that Derek was reminded just how much he wasn't here for. For over a year, he had talked to at least one of them on the phone every day, and visited when he could, even just for a weekend, though only once since Meredith found out she was pregnant. But even with the visits and the phone calls, it didn't make up for the little gestures that his sisters were able to do for her and he wasn't.

"How was your flight?" Annie asked.

"Good, especially considering it's the airport on Christmas Eve," he replied.

"You really couldn't have come a day early?" Mary asked.

"We had to work, Mom," he said, apologetic even though he knew his mother wasn't accusing him of anything. All she really wanted was to be able to spend as much time with them as she could.

"Meredith, how is the baby?" she asked as Maggie took a seat on the couch next to Annie.

"Good," Meredith replied. "Really active, so I don't get as much sleep as I used to, but other than that."

"And what does Emily think?"

"She's getting more excited now that we're decorating and doing fun stuff," Meredith said, and Derek smiled as he recalled Emily helping the two of them prime the nursery walls last Saturday. "I still wonder how she'll actually react though," Meredith continued. "She'll be four-and-a-half, that's kind of old to share the stage for the first time, isn't it?"

"I know it's not exactly what you planned," Annie said softly, "And it'll take some for Emily to adjust, but she'll be ok. Lauren was a little older than three when we had Claire, and she was all right."

Derek nodded, and he wondered for a second about what he didn't know about his sisters. His whole family knew about their miscarriage; his sisters were relentless. Besides, with his breakdown in the weeks following, he did feel the need to talk to someone, even if it was his sister the shrink. But he had to wonder after Annie's comment, in a family with a tradition of having kids one right after the other, if she could empathize with their situation. If there was some old grief there, he never knew about it.

"I'd listen to Annie," Maggie laughed, noticeably trying bring the conversation back to the light, happy place it was before. "Nobody else waited that long between kids."

Mary laughed too, and after a few seconds, the laugh turned into a deep, rattling cough that shook her entire body. It sounded a little like when Emily got croup, that harsh cough that started low in the chest. Maggie and Annie didn't seem that surprised by it, like it was something that had been going on for awhile.

"Mom, you ok?" Derek asked.

"Yeah, hon, just a little cold," she replied, brushing it off as the cough subsided.

He looked over at his sisters, and Maggie stood up. "Derek, give me a hand with the coffee?"

He followed her into kitchen, and watched her take mugs out from the overhead cabinet. She started looking for a tray while she waited for the coffee to finish brewing.

"Mom looks good," Derek said, finding a breakfast tray stored in one of the lower cabinets.

"Yeah," Maggie said without looking up. She lined up five mugs very methodically on the tray, and set a plate of Christmas cookies-the little shortbread cookies shaped like Christmas trees and wreaths that they liked so much growing up-down next to the mugs. "She does."

"Did Farrell seem optimistic when they did her scans?" he asked.

She shrugged, busying herself more than was necessary with the mugs before looking up at him. "I think so."

Derek sighed quietly. "What, Maggie?"

"Mom's been coughing like this for about a week, so we brought it up to Dr. Farrell and he thought it would be a good idea to check it out," she said nervously. "She fought us on it, you know how she is, but we thought it would be a good idea."

"And?"

She paused for a moment, looked back at the coffeemaker to see if it was done yet, and when it wasn't, she turned back towards him and said quietly, "He was worried that the cancer may have spread to her lungs. And since they were doing scans anyway, they added a lung tissue biopsy and a chest x-ray. They did all this two days ago, so we're waiting to hear back. On everything," she finished. "They told us they'd let us know today or tomorrow."

Derek felt like he had been hit in the stomach with a baseball bat, like the wind had been violently knocked out of him when he wasn't expecting it. He really thought she looked better until he heard her cough, really thought that this would all be over in a few days when they got the results of her tests back and they showed that the cancer was in remission. Now, it felt like it was all slipping away, and that they were going to have to gear up for a second battle.

"Mom had a biopsy?" he asked, when he finally found the words.

"We wanted her to wait until after Christmas, but Mom wanted to just get it over with. She's convinced it's just a cold anyway."

"So, Mom had a biopsy two days ago and you're just letting me know now?" he asked, his tone growing angry.

"Mom didn't want you getting upset," Maggie explained. "And she didn't want Meredith getting upset. She doesn't think it's anything anyway."

"Well, what if it is?" he asked. "How long were you going to wait to tell me?"

"Derek, you just got here twenty minutes ago," Maggie replied. "I didn't want to tell you over the phone. I'm telling you now."

"And let me guess, you were the one elected to let me know?"

"Well," she paused. "Yeah. Cause you'd accuse Kathleen of going shrink on you, and it'd just get you even more angry. You and Nancy would kill each other. And you'd make Annie cry. So yeah, it's me."

The frustration built up inside him, a manifestation of being thoroughly outnumbered in his own family for his entire life. It was always four against one, always his sisters choosing things for him, knowing what's best, talking together to figure out how to deal with him.

"Goddamnit, Maggie," he said, raising his voice as he slammed a fist down on the kitchen counter. He was pleased to notice that she looked a little shaken. "What's next? The four of you decide to put Mom on hospice, but don't want to tell me because it'll upset me?"

"Derek," she said, gently but firmly, "Stop. Your mother and your pregnant wife are in there, and if you get either one of them upset, I'll channel Nancy and kill you right here. Just calm down."

If she could have said one thing that would have set him off even more, that was it. Calm down. How the hell was he supposed to calm down when they had let him come in here thinking that they were going to have the most wonderful Christmas, one that would feel even better in comparison to last year's, which was downright somber most of the time. They were all smiles, acting like everything was normal, that the worst part, the scariest part, was over, when all it really was was a lie, supposedly for his benefit.

"Jesus, Maggie, what the hell were you thinking?" he asked. "How hard would it have been to pick up the phone?"

"So you could go crazy waiting by yourself entirely across the country?" she shot back. He had to admit, they picked the right sister to go up against him. She wasn't going to back down. "It's hard enough waiting here, with everyone," she added quietly.

It was how they justified everything they ever did without telling him, every choice they ever made for him-that it was for his own good, that they knew best, that they only did it to save Derek from himself. It started sometime after his father died, though he wasn't sure if it was because of that or just because he was going into his teenage years. But they saw something that he couldn't see as clearly in himself, and that was his proneness to anxiety when something was out of his control, when disaster seemed imminent. He wondered how much else over this past year that they didn't tell him because he was far away and they didn't want him to worry. Maybe it was ok when he was a teenager, or a stupid kid in his twenties. Maybe he really didn't know what was best for himself then, but he was a grown man now, and he could certainly decide for himself.

"Just because I left to move to Seattle doesn't mean I left this family," he raged. He was trying not to get too loud, but he really had no perception of the volume of his voice and right now, he didn't care if Annie heard. In the moment, he didn't think much about what it must have sounded like to Meredith and his mother. "Frankly, I'm sick and tired of you four deciding everything without asking me," he continued. "The four of you have gotten together since we were kids and decided if you were going to like the girls I was dating, how you all felt about my divorce, moving to Seattle, everything. But it stops now. This is too serious. And it's just as important for me to have an opinion and know things as it is for you to. Stop trying to protect me."

When he finished, he stared at his sister, fuming and wanting her to say something else so he could have an excuse to continue yelling at her. All she said though, as she took the coffeepot from it's holder and started to fill each mug, was, "That's enough, Derek."

"Hey," Meredith said, poking her head into the kitchen before stepping all the way in. She immediately moved towards Derek, and touched his arm, asking, "Is everything ok?"

He felt some of the anger leave his body with her touch, and a little remorse filled him when he realized that if she heard him yelling, then so did his mother. He didn't want her to think this was her fault. "Yeah," he replied softly, consciously lowering his voice. "Everything's fine. Want some coffee?"

He turned to Maggie and asked, "This is decaf, right?" Maggie nodded, but Meredith shook her head no.

"I'm actually going to go lie down for a little while."

"Ok," he replied.

She stared at him for a moment, but didn't press him. She rubbed his arm for a second and asked quietly, as if Maggie weren't there, "Are you sure you're ok?"

"Yeah," he replied, "I'll be right up."

He watched Meredith disappear around the corner, and when he heard her footsteps going up the stairs to his old bedroom, he turned back to his sister. "I know what's best for me, Maggie," he said, his voice tense but quiet. "And I'm not by myself out there. You should have told me. I deserve to know, even if I'm not here."

"Ok," she said, conceding for all four of them. "I'm sorry."

"Ok," he replied. The anger was still there, but there wasn't much he could do about it now in light of her apology except wait for it to subside. As much as he hated it when she or another one of his sisters were right, he did need to calm down. "You said they'd let us know today or tomorrow?" he asked.

"That's what they said," she replied.

"But today's Christmas Eve," he said stupidly.

"There are benefits to having doctors in the family," Maggie countered matter-of-factly.

"Ok." He sucked in a deep breath and said, "Lung mets," as if he was trying to brace himself, to get used to the idea. Despite his best efforts, treatment plans started to storm his brain, and he decided that he would track down Preston Burke when he got home.

"Mom thinks we're overreacting," Maggie said.

"Yeah, well," he sighed. "Let's hope she's right."

"None of the kids know," she said, the coffee momentarily forgotten. "Even if it is bad, Mom made us promise not to tell them until after Christmas."

"I won't say anything," he promised.

She picked up the tray and started towards the living room, but he went the other way, towards the main staircase. "If the kids ask where I am," he said, "tell them I'll just be a minute."

He found Meredith upstairs, curled up over the covers on the queen-sized bed in his old bedroom, sleepy but not asleep, still wearing in her jeans and sweater. She was too big to sleep on her stomach anymore, and too uncomfortable to lie on her back for very long, so she'd taken to napping in the position she was in now-one pillow under her head and one pillow between her legs.

She sat up when she heard the door open and close behind her, removing the pillow from between her legs and turning around, beary-eyed. She rubbed her eyes, and looked at him sympathetically.

"Did I wake you?" he asked.

"No, no," she assured him. "What's going on?"

He sat down on the bed next to her, and said quietly, still finding it a little hard to believe, "You know how she was coughing? She's been doing that for a week now. They think the cancer may have spread to her lungs."

"Oh, Derek," she whispered, grabbing for his hand with her right hand and wrapping her left arm around him. "Derek."

"Yeah," he sighed. He was too stunned to cry, still too blindsided to let the possibility of more really sink in. But he wanted her comfort, craved it, and sought it out like it was all that was left. He heard the muted but distinct sound of Emily's voice, screaming with laughter outside as her cousins chased her, or she chased them, around the backyard, and he smiled in spite of himself. It was her turn for childhood now.

"Has she coughed up any blood?" Meredith asked.

"I don't know," he replied. He always forgot to ask all the important things, all the things that would have let him know how much he should really worry, or if this really was just a cough brought on by the cold, damp air of winter in Connecticut. "You know how they were going to do scans since she finished her chemo a couple weeks ago?"

"Yeah."

"They just added some other tests. Maggie said they did a biopsy."

"Ok," Meredith soothed, her free hand kneading the muscles of his neck and shoulders. "Let's stay here until we find out."

It was all he needed to hear, all she could give him right now, the promise of I'm not leaving you and we're not leaving here until we know what we're dealing with. He knew she often worried that she didn't know the right things to say to comfort someone in distress, that most of the time, the right words seemed hard to find. But her voice alone was like a salve on his wounds. With her by his side, it felt like something he could handle if he had to. "We're supposed to know by tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's Christmas Day. Lab results take forever on holidays."

"I know," he said. "My guess is Kathleen and Nancy went over to the hospital and raised hell."

"What good is a medical degree if you can't use it once in awhile, right?" Meredith chuckled.

"Right," he smiled. "Are you ok by yourself?"

"Yeah, I just want to take a quick nap."

"Ok," he replied. Laying a hand on her stomach, he kissed her quickly, and asked, "The baby's ok?"

"Baby's fine, I'm just a little tired from the flight."

"Ok, just come get me if you need anything."

Before he could stand up, she pulled him back to her and kissed him, just a little peck, before she let him go. "Derek? You come get me if _you_ need anything."

"Is Meredith ok?" Mary asked back in the living room, both hands cupped around a mug of coffee.

"She's good, she's just six months pregnant," he replied without taking his seat. "She just wants to lie down for a little while. Mom, you need anything?"

"No, I'm fine, sweetheart," she said. He knew she heard him yelling earlier, and he felt a pang of guilt. He thought he said something about hospice and he especially hoped she hadn't heard that part.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure, Derek," she said firmly. "Now come sit and visit with your mother."

He stayed with them for a little bit, talking a little about himself, but mostly listening to everyone else discuss little details about the nieces and nephews he couldn't keep up with as much as he probably should.

After a few minutes, he went outside to relieve his niece of babysitting duty. The little girls and Ian stayed outside for awhile, pushing each other on the metal swingset that was about as old as he was. He spent almost an hour playing a surprisingly voracious game of touch football, he and five-year-old Will against Will's older brothers, eight-year-old Ben and seven-year-old Kyle. Well, Derek played touch football. The three of them tackled each other, pulling each other to the ground and roughhousing more times than he could keep track of. He watched them play, and he wondered what it would have been like to grow up with all brothers.

They attended evening Mass in the same church he grew up in, and afterward, everyone came back to his mother's house for more coffee and Christmas cookies. The adults sprawled out on the couch, filling every available space on the sectional sofa as well as several chairs brought in from the dining room. The older kids took spaces on the floor, and the younger ones, sleepy despite their best efforts, curled up in their parents' laps. Derek held Emily, still wearing her dress and tights from church, in his arms, her stocking feet dangling over to Meredith's lap. She was fighting to stay awake while everyone talked around her, but her eyes kept closing and she laid her head on his shoulder.

"Now you'll bring the baby out here to visit soon, right?" Kathleen asked.

Unless he and Meredith had another, this baby was going to be the Shepherd family's last, and his family was savoring it almost as much as he and Meredith were.

"Well, we might not even be that far away for that much longer," Meredith said, closing a hand around Emily's foot.

"What are you talking about?" Maggie asked. "You decided where you're doing your fellowship, Meredith?"

"News to me if she did," Derek said, staring at his wife quizzically. He knew a lot of things got lost in the shuffle of everyday life, but he was sure he would have remembered this. As far as he knew, though all her acceptances had come in and she had narrowed it down a little, she was lost in trying to make a final decision.

"No, I haven't decided yet," Meredith replied. "But I was accepted at BWH in Boston and at Mount Sinai, so we might be closer. I don't know yet."

"Wait and see who offers you the best salary," Nancy suggested. "Out of Boston or New York, I mean."

"Derek, you really might come back east?" his mother asked. "It'd be so nice to have you closer to home again."

"We might, I don't know."

"Well, even if you don't, you'll bring the baby," Kathleen said. "No waiting until the holidays when they're eight or nine months old."

"As soon as it's safe for his or her ears," Meredith assured them.

"You still won't let her find out, Derek?" Annie asked.

Derek shrugged. "Everything else, you can kind of guess, or someone slips up and tells you accidentally. This is the one true surprise in life."

"Yeah, I didn't find out a couple times. There really is nothing like it," Kathleen said, as her middle son, Tim, stuck a finger down his throat and pretended to gag.

"See?" Derek nudged Meredith. "Waiting is better."

"Still, I liked being able to plan," Annie chimed in. "There's something to be said for that. And just plain curiosity! Aren't you curious?"

"You just don't have any patience," Derek shot back.

Emily settled into his arms, and the conversation shifted to his oldest nephew, Jeremy, who was midway through his senior year of high school and about to make a decision on which college to attend. A smart and well-rounded kid, he had applied to Yale, his parents' alma mater, as well as several other schools, all in the New England or New York area.

"Remember when Dad knocked down the Christmas tree?" Nancy asked when the conversation started to die down.

He burst into peals of laughter, as did all four of his sisters and his mother. His older nieces and nephews smiled knowingly, having heard this story numerous times, but the younger ones, Emily included, perked up in rapt attention. Everybody always wanted to hear funny stories about Pop.

"Oh my God, he was _so_ mad," Kathleen said between giggles.

"What happened?" Meredith asked. His four brothers-in-law were laughing along with his sisters, and though Meredith was smiling, he didn't realize she was the only one who had somehow never heard this story before.

"This one year-I think I was eight years old," he said. "Dad was trying to fit the Christmas tree in the stand and he just could _not_ get it to work. The screws wouldn't work or something. I don't know. He couldn't get it to stand up straight. But Dad finally thought he had the tree done, and we put all the lights and ornaments on it, and when he went to put the star on top, the entire thing fell down again," he laughed a little, remembering. "And Dad just freaked out."

"Yelling and cursing," Nancy said, complete with sweeping hand gestures, bringing the day back in vivid memory for Derek. "He just left it there and stomped into the kitchen."

Suddenly, he could see the sweater his dad was wearing that day. It was white and navy; it might have had snowflakes on it. He could hear his rich voice, yelling obscenities in frustration while his kids laughed. He saw the pine needles falling to the floor, heard ornaments breaking. But mostly, he remembered the wonderful cramping in his stomach that came with laughing to the point of tears.

"So what did you do?" one of his nieces asked.

"We just kept laughing," Annie replied. He often felt badly for Annie, who only got eight years of life, and much less time that she could actually remember, with their dad before he died. He was thankful that at least she had stories like this, even if it wasn't much, even if it wasn't enough.

"It just made him even more angry at first," Nancy remembered aloud. "But then he laughed too. We always knew when he was really mad, and when he was just frustrated. He was hardly ever really mad. I think the lights' cord got pulled out of the outlet, and some ornaments broke, but that was it."

"Nana, you weren't mad too?" one of the little kids asked.

Mary shook her head, and smiled. "Your Pop always wanted everything to be perfect. And he loved Christmas. But no, I wasn't mad. What do I care if the tree falls down? If it falls down, we'll just put it back up. No harm done."

Emily sat up a little and wrapped her arms around Derek's neck, shifting her position so that they were flush chest to chest. She closed her eyes, and yawned. The combination of jetlag, a warm room, and by all accounts, being up way past her bedtime, was getting to her. He knew if he were to suggest that she go up to bed, though, she'd wake up and fight him on it. She wouldn't want to leave when her family was still here.

As eleven o'clock neared, Derek's sisters looked like they were starting to think about going home. The conversation was slowing down, and everyone was starting to look tired. Annie's husband Kevin cradled Ian, who had been passed out for hours, in his arms, and Will wedged himself between Maggie and his dad Paul, his head on Maggie's lap. He looked like he was using all his remaining energy just to keep his eyes open.

Nancy had actually gotten up to get her family's coats when the phone rang. Before the phone even got to the second ring, she was back in the living room, standing next to Derek at the end of the sofa opposite Mary. Mary reached over and picked up the phone on the end table next to her, but even before she left the room to talk to whoever was on the other end of the line, they all knew what the call was. Who else could be calling this late on Christmas Eve?

Mary stepped around all her grandchildren who were sprawled out on the floor, and took the cordless phone into the kitchen, out of earshot. Derek's stomach felt like it was sinking down to his ankles while he waited, wondering why she left, and if his mother really expected good news, why she wouldn't let any of them see her face now. He wrapped one arm around Emily, who was practically asleep and none the wiser anyway, her head on his shoulder.

Meredith took his hand, and rubbed his arm up and down. "I'm right here," she whispered, so quietly that he wasn't sure anyone else even heard her.

He looked around the room at his sisters, all in similar states of fear. Annie had buried her head in Kevin's shoulder, and, cradling their son in one arm, he cupped her knee with his other hand. Paul pressed his lips to Maggie's temple, leaning over Will to get to her. Kathleen leaned forward, Jerry's hand on her back, waiting with her hands clasped tightly together. Nancy's six coats hung limply in her arms, like she could barely hold onto them, her eyes locked from across the room with Andrew's, who looked like he was ready to spring off the couch at any moment.

Derek couldn't take his eyes off his older nieces and nephews, Jeremy with his knees drawn towards his chest and his head in his hands, Nancy's Lizzy with her face buried in the crook of her arm, Lauren with her arm wrapped around Annie's leg. He felt like they had made a mistake not telling them, seeing that they were scared now, and knowing that they were left to wonder without knowing anything for sure. The smaller kids, seeing their parents and older siblings tense and tighten, looked up with fear in their eyes, wondering what was happening that could change the tone of the room so quickly.

Nobody spoke, and when Mary returned a few minutes later, Derek felt like he had been given just enough time to allow the bile to rise in his throat. He trembled all over, as much as he tried to stop it, and he tried to just focus on Meredith's hand on his arm, which stilled when she felt him start to shake.

"That was the hospital," Mary said quietly, her expression unreadable. "They just wanted to let me know that all my chest scans and tests came back negative."

For a second, he had to remind himself that he was a doctor and that 'negative' was something positive. His grasp on Emily tightened, and though she was groggy, she picked her head up and looked around. Meredith squeezed his arm, and waited with him silently. It seemed like forever before he got up the guts to ask, but before he could let himself feel any sort of relief, he had to know, "What about the lung biopsy?"

"Negative," she said, a crack of a smile starting to emerge on her face.

"What about the cough?" he pressed.

"It's just a cough. He suggested getting a humidifier."

"So we're done?" Annie asked breathlessly, the only question that really mattered.

Mary finally let herself smile. "We're done."

An outside spectator might have thought the room exploded. Everyone sprung up, screaming, cheering, and hugging the closest person to them. Kathleen hugged Jerry, laughing and crying openly, and in a second, Andrew was already across the room, Nancy in his arms. Annie's smile looked big enough to crack her face in two, tears streaming down her face as she tried to comfort Ian, who had woken up in the commotion and was crying in his father's arms. Maggie took a startled, sleepy Will up in her arms and was hugging Mary like she never wanted to let her go. Some of Derek's nieces were hugging each other, jumping up and down in place. A few other kids looked like they didn't quite know what to do with themselves, looking around wide-eyed at their family's utter joy. All around, all Derek could hear were the sound of children's voices crying out happily, "Nana! Nana!"

As soon as the words came, a weight lifted off Derek's shoulders and he jumped up along with the rest of his family. He didn't realize how heavy the burden was until it was gone, until he let himself be filled with the lightness of euphoria instead. His eyes filled with tears as Meredith wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed him, the baby between them and Emily in his arms. Emily looked around, jolted awake, as he embraced Meredith now more tightly than he ever had. He knew just how crucial she was in keeping him together over the past year, and she just stood there now and let him hold her, reveling in the relief.

His heart was ready to beat out of his chest with adrenaline, but he hadn't even thought to turn around, to hug his sisters or his mother, until he felt another hand on his shoulder and Meredith let him go. She took Emily from him, and sat down on the couch with her to try to soothe her nerves and explain to her what had just happened. His mother stood before him, tears in her eyes and peace and joy all over her face. She pulled him into her arms, and, over the noise, he heard her tell him she loved him.

When she stepped back, she cupped his face in both her hands, looking at him like he was still very much her little boy. "I want to come see that baby in a few months."

He nodded, and though he couldn't stop grinning, he realized then how truly afraid she must have been. All long-term plans were not spoken of, even something as simple as expecting to visit a newborn grandchild. Even though she had told her daughters that this was nothing and that she wasn't worried, it was clear now that she had been; the relief was evident in her expression now. She had already brought them all through the death of their father, and now she brought them through the near-loss of their mother. He didn't know it was possible to admire her more.

Later, when his sisters had finally gone home, and a weary Mary and way over-tired Emily had finally gone to bed, Derek curled up with Meredith on the couch. The TV volume was down almost as low as it could go, neither of them watching the old Christmas movie that started playing a few hours before and would keep going on a continuous loop the entire next day. Emily's stack of gifts-which they ordered online, shipped to this house, and asked Derek's sisters to help them wrap-settled safely under the tree until morning.

Meredith sat in the middle corner of the sofa, wearing a tight long-sleeved shirt and a pair of Derek's pajama bottoms that were big enough to accommodate her stomach. She wore her hair loose over her shoulders and laid her head against the back of the sofa. She draped her bare feet across Derek's lap, and he took one in both of his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the arch.

"You know, you unleashed a monster when you told my family that we might move back east," he said.

"I know. But we might."

She used to be _so_ guarded with his family, freaking out about every interaction, never speaking unless spoken to. He wondered if, finally, she felt like she belonged.

"You think so?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, maybe. I grew up in Boston. I mean, I don't have any family there or anything, but I know the city."

"And it's a great program," he added.

"Yeah, well, that too," she agreed. "But your family is here. So maybe New York."

"Well, we have family in Seattle too," he said, before he knew what he was saying.

He used to get so defensive about what family was. The new definition set in for him sometime after Mark slept with Addison; you could end friendships, but it was never a question for him whether or not family could ever be truly lost. But as his time in Seattle wore on, he started to revert back to his original way of thinking, that friends could mean just as much. He watched Cristina fight Meredith's battles for her, even when they were already lost, and watched Izzie hold Meredith's hand during labor and loss. He saw all four of the strangers Meredith started her intern year with come to love her just as much as his sisters loved him. And, slowly, over seven years, he saw Mark become his confidant again. They had just as much family in Seattle as they did in Connecticut.

Meredith smiled, and closed her eyes for a second as he ran his fingertips from her ankle to her toes. "Yeah, we do."

"Is it between those three cities, do you think?" he asked.

"I think so. It's just a lot to think about."

He switched to her other foot and repeated the same motions. "Well, it's only for two years, and then we can go somewhere else if we want to."

She twisted a little in her place, adjusting to get more comfortable. She bent her arm at the elbow and laid her head down on it, pinning it to the back of the couch. The other arm curled around her belly, her hand right below her navel. "And you're not worried that you might not find a job?" she asked.

"Maybe in Boston, but at Sinai, no. Name still carries some weight," he said. "They'd find a place for me." Though he didn't keep in touch very actively with many people from his days in Manhattan, he knew he could still call on dozens of contacts in New York. With so many hospitals, something was bound to come up.

"Why don't you just tell me what you want to do?" she asked, frustrated. She did this every time they talked about her fellowship, wanting him to choose for her.

"It's your decision," he said calmly. He let go of her foot and moved closer to her, so her knees were over his lap. "I'm happy with the three choices you've narrowed it down to, but seriously, I'm a non-factor in this. Think about the programs, think about the locations, think about Emily, but don't worry about me. I'm coming with you no matter what."

"Would you rather New York because you think it'll be easier to find a job?" she pressed.

"No, not really," he shrugged. "If you pick Boston and I can't find anything, I'll stay home for awhile. We have enough saved that we don't really need both of us to work, and I could stay home with the kids if it came to that. Might actually be kind of fun. I'd do that anywhere."

Meredith laughed. "I think the Chief might kill you if you tried that in Seattle."

"Maybe." He laughed too, and wrapped an arm around both of her legs.

When he married Addison, their original thought was that they'd wait until they finished their residencies to start having children. Eventually, they decided to postpone a family until after their fellowships, and of course, then it wound up never happening. But they reasoned it, saying that they were still young, and they wanted to do the truly hard parts of their careers before bringing kids into the mix. No obligations to anyone else.

When Meredith got pregnant with Emily, they had barely talked about having kids at all, let alone a timeframe for doing so. And thank God they didn't have a chance to decide to wait; what would life be like without Emily? But still, all of Meredith's choices in her medical career had been for someone else. And she spent the majority of her residency learning not only how to be a surgeon, but also how to be a wife and mother. He wanted her to have the freedom to choose, to explore without guilt.

"Meredith, I'll go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do for these next two years. This is important. And I loved being your teacher, but I'm your partner first. So, this time, you lead, and I'll follow."

After a spirited debate over which present Emily was going to like the most (He thought it was going to be a toy cash register complete with fake bills and coins; Meredith was convinced that she'd love a science kit, if only because it came with a hand microscope.), they went upstairs to bed. Spooning together the same way they did every night since before they were married. His body wrapped around hers, and he held her hands in the dark, knowing that even though Emily was going to wake him up early, tonight would be some of the best sleep he'd ever gotten. The initial heart-pounding euphoria had worn off once his sisters and their families went home and the house got quiet again, but the lasting feeling of relief and the absence of crippling fear was setting in deep in his bones. He hadn't realized how truly exhausted he was until now when he could truly rest.

"My mom wants to come visit after the baby is born," he whispered to Meredith. "Is that ok?"

"Yeah," she said, squeezing his hands. "I want her to come. It'll definitely be nice to have an extra set of hands around for a few days. Everybody's going to be starting to study for boards; there's only so much babysitting we can make them do. You'll call her when it's time and tell her to come?"

"Yeah," he replied. He took his hand from her grasp, and laid it flat against her lower abdomen.

She let his hand stay there for a moment or two, but then suddenly she grabbed it and moved it up a few inches higher. "No, right there," she said. "Feel it?"

She kept asking him for weeks, every night when she said it felt like the baby was jumping and flipping inside her and kicking like crazy, more than Emily ever did. She'd take his hand and move it from spot to spot, a different place almost every night, but he hadn't felt anything until a few weeks ago. It was just a sharp poke into the palm of his hand, and now, even though it had done it dozens of times since then, it still felt almost magical.

"Three more months," he said.

"I think I felt better when it was a two-to-one ratio," she said.

"No, you didn't. You were freaked out."

"So were you," she shot back.

"But we did fine, and we will again."

"You know what would help me feel more prepared?" she asked, her voice getting groggy but still coy. "If we found out if it's a boy or a girl."

He chuckled. "Nice try."

"Don't you want to know even a little bit?" she asked.

"I want to be surprised."

"Come on, I don't want to call it 'Roo' for another three months," she whined. "I don't want to call it 'It' for another three months."

"Really?" he teased. "'Roo' is some of my best work."

_He came up with it only about a week and a half ago, after weeks of brainstorming so that the baby wouldn't feel left out because Emily was 'Bean' and he or she didn't have a special nickname. A part of him felt like the concentrated effort to search for a name would undoubtedly mean that the name wouldn't stick for much longer after the baby got a real name, but he felt he owed it to his second-born to try anyway._

_Meredith kept saying that the baby felt like it was flipping over, literally jumping instead of just kicking, but he couldn't really understand what she meant until he was able to feel for himself. It wasn't all the time-sometimes it would just gently turn over once and that was it-but when it got going, it kept going, sometimes for a full four or five minutes before it finally calmed down._

_'It really is jumping around a lot,' he said in disbelief._

_'I know,' she replied. 'It's like I have a freakin' kangaroo or something in there.'_

"Well, what if I found out and you didn't?" Meredith suggested, moving his hand back down as the baby moved. "That way you could still be surprised and I could plan."

He smiled as the baby gave a particularly hard thump against his palm, and he wondered how she ever got any sleep at all with all this going on inside her.

"You'd never be able to keep it from me," he said. "Plus, don't you think I'd notice if you started painting the nursery blue or pink?"

She paused for a second, and he thought he stumped her, but then she said, "I'd put a deadbolt on the door. And I'd put the key in Cristina's locker. You'd never make it out of there alive."

His laugh turned into a yawn, and he replied, "That's probably true. But you like surprises."

"I hate surprises," she shot back immediately.

"You _normally_ hate surprises. But this surprise, you liked. Remember?" he murmured.

_He promised her it would only be one last push, and once Emily's shoulders were free, the rest of her slid out easily into the doctor's hands. The doctor suctioned out her mouth and nose, and as soon as she did, Emily's gurgles turned into impressive screams._

_'Is the baby ok?' Meredith had asked in a wavering, nervous voice. Beads of sweat dripped down her face, matting her hair to her forehead and temples. 'Derek?'_

_'Baby looks good,' the doctor told them. 'It's a girl!' He remembered barely getting a good look at her, cutting the cord quickly so the nurse could whisk her over to the warmer and hold an oxygen mask over her face because she was three weeks early. But Emily kept crying on her own._

_'Where is she?' Meredith asked, her legs still in the stirrups, so tired that she was almost delirious. The nurse assured her that they were just waiting until she pinked up, but after a few seconds, Meredith said, 'She's crying. She's pink. I want to see her.'_

_While she was pregnant, Meredith confessed to him one night, in the middle of the night, that she was scared of having a girl. But seeing her in that moment, when the nurse finally put the baby in her arms, and she burst into tears of absolute joy, he knew she was ready._

"Yeah, I remember," she whispered.

"Come on," he said, kissing her shoulder. "It's only ninety more days anyway."


	28. Be so different and feel so much alike

_"How can we be so different and feel so much alike?" mused Flitter._ _  
_ _"And how can we feel so different and be so much alike?" wondered Pip._ _  
_ _"I think this is quite a mystery," Flap chirped._ _  
_ _"I agree," said Stellaluna, "But we're friends."_ _  
_ _\- Stellaluna_

* * *

In the prep room off the nurses' station on the fourth floor, Meredith pored over back issues of the Annals of Neurosurgery, looking for something—anything—even slightly relevant to a difficult case the entire department was getting ready to operate on next week. She had four books open, and the computer screen dotted with six or seven windows. She barely took notice when Cristina walked in and sat down next to her, but when she finally spoke, Meredith couldn't help but stop what she was doing.

"Cleveland Clinic," Cristina said matter-of-factly, folding her hands in her lap and looking at Meredith.

Cristina had been talking about it for months, but the way she said it this time, it sounded final.

"What?"

"Cleveland Clinic," Cristina said again, with a satisfied smile. "As of July, I will officially be a cardiothoracic surgical fellow."

"You made your decision?" Meredith asked.

"You haven't yet?" Cristina shot back.

The five of them, along with the rest of their class, had taken months to consider their options. From what Meredith could tell, most senior residents were offered a spot at Seattle Grace, though by no means was everyone was taking the opportunity. But as far as she knew, none of her friends had made a final decision yet. Except Cristina, apparently.

Meredith turned in her chair, abandoning her medical journals and online articles for the time being. While Cristina reached out and took her future with both hands, Meredith still felt like she was grasping for hers, wondering how to balance everything in order to make the best decision she could. Though she narrowed down her choice weeks ago, she still felt like something final was impossible to discern.

"Cleveland Clinic," she murmured.

"Next step in becoming a cardio god," Cristina said smugly. "It was a real horse race for awhile between them and Mass Gen, but in the end, common sense prevailed. Better surgeries."

Something twinged inside her, and Meredith couldn't tell if it was a little misguided jealousy that Cristina's decision was already made, or the fear of impending loss, both, or something else entirely. With those few words, Cristina set the ball in motion; everything really was really going to change, and soon.

"Has everybody else picked their fellowship?" she asked anxiously.

Cristina shrugged. "I think so."

"The deadline's not today, right? I didn't somehow overlook that?"

"It's Friday," Cristina assured her.

"Crap," Meredith sighed. She flipped a few of the books closed, even though she wasn't finished with them. "Am I the only one who is still up in the air on this?"

"Well, I don't know about the other residents," Cristina said. "But yeah, I think so."

That old sensation of feeling like she was falling behind and not measuring up built up inside her. She stared down at her lap for a moment and tried to gather her thoughts, and when she looked up, Cristina's smug look had disappeared. Meredith nodded and quietly said, "Ok," but nothing else.

"You're also the only one who figured out the other stuff," Cristina said, with a comforting tone that was reserved for so few. "You got married, you'll be starting your fellowship with a four-year-old and a newborn—you're entitled to some time to think."

Meredith nodded. She knew it was true, that she had so much more to consider than any of her friends and the fact that she had waited so long meant that she understood that much was at stake. She was changing four lives, not just one.

"Do you want to go to Joe's tonight?" Cristina offered. "We can talk about it?"

Meredith nodded again. She wanted Derek's opinion too, but he kept telling her that he didn't want to influence her decision-making at all. He kept acting like he was giving her a gift, but it felt more like a burden than anything else. More than anything, she wanted him to give her something to go on.

"If Derek is ok to take Emily home?" Cristina added.

"Yeah," Meredith murmured, looking up at Cristina with a grateful smile on her lips. For a long time now, Derek was the one she looked to first to talk her down when she freaked out. But often, Derek was the reason for her anger, or her frustration, or her fear, and when that happened, she always reached for Cristina. The full brunt of the impending change hit her then; what would she do when Cristina was hundreds, or thousands, of miles away? What if she needed her? All of a sudden, the city of Cleveland seemed ridiculous. It was just a dot on a map, and even though she knew it was a big city, with an airport, it seemed isolated somewhere in the middle of the country, when she would be on either one of two ends.

"I'll see you later?" Cristina said, heading for the door.

Of course there were patients to see, surgeries to perform. Of course she couldn't stay. But before she could disappear out of sight, Meredith called for her, and when she turned back around, all Meredith could make herself say was, "Cleveland Clinic is in Ohio."

Cristina offered her a small, wistful kind of smile, like she had realized something vital in that moment too. "Yeah. It is," she said.

She crossed paths with Derek later that day, pulling him aside when she saw him in the hallway, and telling him, abruptly and almost frantically, that she had to cancel their lunch plans for the afternoon.

She and her friends spent the past year talking about fellowship opportunities, but since Cristina announced her decision, Meredith wanted to know where everyone else was going, and who would be left with her if she stayed. So much of her personal life had become something that was from, with, and for Derek. But before they settled, all she had was the four of them. They grew up together the same as any group of siblings would, and for so long, they were her only family. So much of what she learned—the real stuff, not just where to cut and how to cauterize—happened with these four. She saw their faces every day for seven years, and now that she knew that they weren't going to be together anymore, she needed to see them.

So she told Derek that she had to cancel lunch, and before he could say anything or ask why, she continued, "And can you pick Emily up tonight?"

"Yeah," he assured her, knowing that the cancellation of plans was hardly an anomaly. "Why, do you have a surgery?"

"No. Well, not at the moment," she clarified. "But everybody freakin' picked where they're doing their fellowship. Cristina's going to Cleveland Clinic."

"Oh," Derek murmured sympathetically. Part of her realized that Derek had gone through this too, sometime in the past, but all she could focus on was what was happening to her now.

"In Ohio," she said.

"I know," he said quietly. He touched her hip, and then her cheek, while he searched for the right words to say. "Isn't the deadline not until the end of the week?" he asked.

"The de facto deadline may as well have been today," she said, throwing her hands up. "Cristina said everybody's made their decision except me."

"You will," he reassured her with a smile. "There's no rush."

"There kind of is, Derek."

She sighed, and took a second to think of how to explain this to him, but instead, she found herself filled with jealousy. Jealousy of Derek, because he was already settled, already brilliant, already had all this behind him. Jealous of her friends because their choices were just for them, and their choices were made with seemingly brazen confidence, at least in Cristina's case.

"I just want to be with them today, ok?" she said quietly.

He nodded. "Ok."

"I'll see you at home?"

"Yeah, I'll see you at home," he said. He kissed her on the cheek, and turned to leave, but before he was out of earshot, he turned back and said, "Meredith? Page me if you need to talk."

Even after so many years, there were moments when Meredith still felt like an intern, and during lunch that day, there were times when she actually forgot that they were all real live surgeons now. At times, it still felt like they were all just starting out together, fumbling through their first days at this hospital, competing against each other to be the first one to cut, to get the top score on a test, to be the attendings' favorite resident. It was strange to think that they were almost settled now; they weren't babies anymore.

Still, some things never changed, and because they still never knew when lunch might end with an urgent page, Meredith cut right to the chase. She made them all go around the table and tell her where they decided to do their fellowships, as if by hearing their answers, she could find her own.

George was taking a trauma fellowship at UC San Diego. Meredith kind of remembered hearing him talk about San Diego, but not recently, like a long time ago, when they were much younger and just starting out. Izzie looked excited for him, but then again, as the others shared what they were doing, she looked excited for everyone. And as much as she would miss George, Meredith was happy for him and excited for his chance to be a leader there.

Meredith breathed a sigh of relief when Izzie and Alex told everyone that they were both staying in Seattle. At least if she stayed, she would still have them, though only Alex was staying at Seattle Grace as a neonatal fellow while Izzie would be moving on to Seattle Children's, at least for now.

At Joe's later that night, Meredith's sense of déjà vu was even stronger. Even though it was a weeknight, a lot of hospital staff still stopped in for a drink after work, and Joe had built a rapport with every doctor Meredith knew. Once she had Emily, she hardly ever had time to come here anymore, but she realized she certainly owed Joe quite a bit.

"Meredith!" Joe said when he saw her walk in. "Haven't seen you in awhile! What can I get for you?"

"Just some water, Joe, thanks."

She took a seat at an empty table and looked around at the younger doctors, many of whom she at least recognized if not worked with directly. Joe kept the drinks coming for them as they talked, laughed, and commiserated. She knew now that doctors settled into types, and that as much as she wanted to consider herself and her friends to be exceptions, she knew that they weren't. As she got to know these younger doctors, she saw them following in their footsteps. Marchione was a bleeding heart like Izzie. Christianson was the overachiever, like Cristina. Hayes was a younger George, the puppy.

Cristina arrived a few minutes later, ordered a beer, and sat down next to Meredith. She took a sip, while Meredith regarded her, and for a moment they said nothing.

"So," Meredith finally said. "Cleveland Clinic?"

"Yeah."

Meredith sighed, and nodded. She couldn't help but smile, because she was happy for Cristina. She really was. It was just—why did Cleveland have to be so freakin' far away? She could remember the long shifts as an intern, when the days and nights blended together and sleep was something evasive, impossible. Back then, it seemed like this day, this choice, would never come. Now, it seemed almost unbelievable that it came so quickly.

"How did this happen?" she finally asked.

"How did what happen?"

"We grew up."

"Yeah," Cristina agreed, and Meredith wondered if she was thinking some of the same things. "I guess we did."

"When do you have to move?" she asked.

"I don't know. I didn't start looking for a place yet, or anything. But sometime after the boards."

"What did Garrett say when you told him?"

Cristina's thing with the pulmonologist had gone on long enough at this point that it had to be getting serious, but ever since Burke, Cristina was so guarded with men, swearing whenever Meredith would ask that she would never let her eyebrows be shaved off again. Things seemed to be going well with Garrett so far, but it was difficult to get a good read on what the situation really was.

"He still has another year of his fellowship. Here. So he's staying," Cristina said. "He knows I'm going, but we really haven't had that talk yet."

"Are you going to stay together?" Meredith asked. The baby's foot thumped against her ribs, and she pressed down on her belly with two fingers to try to get the baby to move down a little into a less uncomfortable position. Cristina regarded her with concern, but she brushed her off, shaking her head to let her know that she was fine.

"I don't know," Cristina replied.

"Is he going to try to get an attending job here when he finishes his fellowship?"

"I'm not sure."

"Do you want to stay together?" she pressed.

"What's with the third degree, Oprah?" Cristina asked.

"I'm not being Oprah," Meredith said defensively. "But if he stays, and you stay together, then you'll visit. And if I stay, that would be good."

Cristina gave Meredith a small smile. She pushed her drink away and squared her body towards her friend, and though her voice got quieter, Meredith heard her perfectly clearly. "If you stay," she said, "There would be other reasons to visit besides Garrett."

"Cristina," Meredith said, a smile spreading across her face. Sometimes she worried for Cristina and what being so dedicated to work might do to her life, but in moments like this, she knew she would be all right. Cristina wasn't cold.

"Emily will become a professional baker or something if Izzie is the only other influence in her life," Cristina continued hastily. "Can't let it happen."

Meredith laughed a little at that. "I need to just decide," she said.

"You don't have to right now," Cristina offered comfortingly.

"When?" Meredith shot back.

"Well, probably sometime this week," she conceded. "But you've narrowed it down."

"Yeah, it's down to BWH, Sinai, and Seattle Grace," Meredith said.

Cristina nodded. "BWH is a good program."

"They're all good programs, that's the problem."

"True," Cristina agreed. "But you grew up in Boston. You could go back there."

"But I have a history with this hospital too," Meredith replied. She felt like she should have gotten a pen and paper and started taking notes. At this point, a pro-con list didn't seem that silly.

"They might let you do more procedures here, since they'll know you can handle it as soon as you start," Cristina said. "You're sleeping with the head of your department; that has its advantages too."

"It's not that I would mind having to prove myself," Meredith said. In fact, she kind of wondered what it might be like to not have her personal life so entwined with her professional life. Of course, she had been granted small favors over the years, as much from her history with the Chief as from her relationship with Derek. But it had also created so many complications, resentments, and conflicts. Starting somewhere fresh seemed almost easier in a way. "It's just..." she trailed off.

"What?"

"I don't think it's really about the medicine at this point," she admitted. "It doesn't matter to me if they let me do a corpus callosotomy in the first week if I can't take Emily to her first day of kindergarten. Does that make sense?"

"No," Cristina replied. "Yeah. But no," she said. "I've never loved anyone as much as you love her."

"I've never loved anyone this much _until_ her," she said quietly. "I just don't want a nanny raising them. I know we'll probably need one eventually, but right now, Derek and I can do it alone."

"You need people though," Cristina said. "You can't do it all by yourself."

"We have people," Meredith replied. "Derek's family is freakishly clannish. And they'd be a train ride away if we lived in Manhattan. And Izzie and Alex are staying here. Lexie and Mark, too."

"Well, what about Boston? Don't you have people there?"

Meredith laughed. "Nobody I'd let within fifty feet of Emily."

"Think you'll ever tell her how much Mommy and Daddy messed you up?"

Meredith shook her head. A montage of her younger self scrolled through her mind: sneaking out of the house, dying her hair pink, wearing lots of black eyeliner and all black clothes, cutting class, drinking tequila out of the bottle in basements and in the woods and anywhere parents weren't, and sleeping with more boys than she could even keep track of. If any of the people she spent her youth with still lived in Boston, she would never tell them that she was moving back to the area. Frankly, if she were to show up at her high school reunion and tell everyone there that she was a neurosurgeon now, they would probably never believe it.

"Not until I know I raised her right. I don't want her getting any ideas from me."

Cristina nodded, and looked down at her beer, cupping the glass with both hands. "So Boston's out," she said when she looked back up.

"Yeah," Meredith said, and she realized then that she knew it all along, really. "Boston's out."

She sighed and pushed her empty glass away from her, the condensation leaving a wet streak across the table. "I think my problem is that Derek keeps saying that it doesn't matter to him. I'm supposed to think about me, and Emily, and the baby, but not him. But it does matter. It matters what he thinks because we're going together, and either way, I'm choosing his path for the next two years as much as mine."

"You should tell him that," Cristina said. "Tell him to help you decide, either here or New York."

"It would be easier in New York, in a lot of ways," Meredith said. She paused to consider the possibility a little more, and for a moment, she saw Emily having sleepovers with her cousins and Derek taking the kids to Yankee games in the summer.

"Derek knows people there, and his family all helps each other out so much. They're kind of intense about it," she said. She realized that if they moved, his sisters would want them around all the time and they would be involved in everything they did. When she first met them, it was absolutely overwhelming, smothering in the worst way. Now, it was still intense, but it felt almost familiar. It didn't seem that different from what she had here with her friends. "But once you get used to it, it's not terrible. And if his mom relapses, he could be right there. Being away was hard for him."

"Is he thinking about that?"

"He hasn't said so if he is," Meredith replied. In fact, as soon as they found out Mary's cancer was in remission, he returned to his usual optimistic self. His steps were lighter, he wasn't exhausted and tense all the time, and he didn't jump when the phone rang late at night. He never talked about it, but he knew that a relapse would be fiercer, more difficult, albeit rare. "He knows the science. He knows there's a slight chance, despite the surgery, and the chemo and radiation. I haven't brought it up though. He's been so happy."

"Plus there's about a million hospitals in New York that would hire him in a second," Cristina added.

"That too," she replied. Even though they might not be hired at the same place, she had to believe that any number of hospitals would be chomping at the bit to hire a brilliant surgeon like Derek.

Her pager beeped loudly from inside her bag. She rummaged through for it, hoping that nobody was actually dying and that she wasn't in for a night in the OR. She called the third floor nurses' station, the number that scrolled across the pager's tiny screen, and when someone answered, she said, "This is Dr. Grey. I was paged."

Dr. Moreno, a timid but eager to please intern, who wasn't without skill but needed a little more coddling than most, was on the other end of the line. Quickly, she ran through a list of questions she had for Meredith about a non-critical patient whose new test results had just come in not long before. From what Meredith could tell, the patient's new labs didn't change his treatment protocol that much, if at all, but Dr. Moreno lacked confidence in her own ability to determine anything for sure, and she wanted to get Meredith's opinion rather than to make a mistake.

When Meredith finally hung up with her a minute or two later, Cristina had finished her beer. "Everything ok?" she asked.

Meredith sighed. "I gotta go."

"What happened?"

"Dr. Moreno needs to grow a pair more than anything else. She wants me to wants me to look at some test results and see if the overnight instructions need to be adjusted on one of my patients from this morning. I'll see you tomorrow."

Meredith went back across the street, hoping to make this as quick as possible. It wasn't the first time that Moreno had asked for something like this, and she was going to have to make it clear that she couldn't hold her hand through every night on call, especially not at this point in her intern year.

She didn't have to think about where she was going as she stepped on the elevator in the main lobby and headed upstairs. Everything about this place was so familiar, so comfortable, so tied to something else. How many moments did she and Derek have in this elevator alone? This might have been the exact place she fell in love with him, or started to at least.

Everything seemed pretty quiet on the third floor, and Meredith had to wonder what the hell Moreno needed her for. She should have kept her on the phone longer. "Hey, Dr. Grey," Tyler grinned from behind the desk. "I didn't know you were on-call tonight. What do you need?"

"Hey, Tyler," she replied. "I'm only here for a second. Pretend I'm not here actually. Have you seen Dr. Moreno?"

"I think she was checking on a post-op appy in 3204."

"Oh, Dr. Grey, there you are!" Dr. Moreno called, rushing down the hall with a stack of charts in her arms. Meredith spent the next few minutes going through the patient in question's chart with her, practically line by line. She would have to talk to Moreno's resident about this. Eventually, like after the intern test in a few months, she was going to have to not only handle this kind of thing all on her own, but she would have to show other doctors the ropes. Finally, they decided to make one minor adjustment in the dosage of one of the patient's medications, and Meredith told her that if she had additional questions throughout the night, then under no circumstances was she to page anyone but the on-call resident.

As she left the hospital, she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to stay here for at least two more years, maybe forever. Her history with this place started before she was even born, and now she was one of the hospital's most respected residents, working for the man who defined the course of her life as much as almost anything else she ever did. If she stayed here, it would mean something more than just becoming a neurosurgical fellow at Seattle Grace Hospital. It would mean staying in the place where her mother failed, at the exact point in her mother's life that she chose to flee. While in a lot of ways, it wouldn't be a change at all to stay here, in another way, a way that maybe no one else was thinking about, this would mean so much.

On the way home, she wondered what it would be like to give Derek his family back, or if he even wanted those parts of his old life back. Was she the only one who thought that sometimes his sisters could be a little suffocating? She wondered what it would be like to move to a new place on her own terms, not out of a desire to run away from an overbearing mother or the obligation to take care of her later when she fell ill. It might be kind of exciting, and New York had so much to offer.

Crap, she just needed to pick one and be done with it.

She heard the water running upstairs from Derek's shower as soon as she walked in the front door. It was late enough that Emily would already be in bed, probably asleep. Some of Emily's toys, little plastic animals that came with a zoo play set, were strewn across the living room carpet, and a few of her books were fanned out on the coffee table along with a coffee mug and a few sections of that morning's newspaper.

Quietly, she walked upstairs, and eased open Emily's door. Sure enough, she was asleep in her bed, and when Meredith leaned over her to kiss her goodnight, she never woke. She pulled the covers up a little higher around Emily's body, and then stepped back to look around the room. Everything in this house and on this land—all the things they could see, and even more, the things they couldn't—it was all for her. And Derek knew that all along, before Emily had a name, before she even existed. He knew.

He knew, even when all they were, were flirtations and a few nights between the sheets. Really, when she pressed him on it, he told her that he knew for sure the first time he brought her here, and he told her a bunch of stupid little things about himself, but then she reached out her hand, and they walked across the land to the trailer together.

It seemed like Derek had been waiting forever to build this house, and by the time they finished it, it was so much more than just a roof over their heads. It had everything else wrapped up in it. When they took Emily on walks, she thought of Doc and the long walks they took with him along the same trail to the lake, when neither she nor Derek could be sure how much they missed the other, but they knew being apart wasn't right. She thought of skinny-dipping in that lake, knowing that they were the only ones around for miles, and that this was starting to feel a lot like forever.

Derek wanted every detail of the place to be perfect, but when she thought of the little things that he wanted so much, it didn't matter that the floors were made of shiny real wood. All that mattered was that Emily's first steps happened on those boards. She didn't care about the brass doorknob and knocker, but she did love the way the sunlight flooded in in the morning when she opened that door.

It wasn't just that they built it together, she thought as she flicked on the lights in the baby's room and sat down in the white rocking chair. It was that they had any of it at all, that she actually wanted this and wasn't too damaged or too scared to reach out and take it after all. It was more than a house, more than a spectacular view. It was falling in love, breaking the cycle, and overcoming her past in a way that was truly extraordinary.

She gripped the arms of the chair and let herself rock gently back and forth a few times while she looked around the room. They primed the walls last week, and Derek promised her that he would paint the room whatever color she wanted while she was in the hospital as a compromise for letting him be surprised about the baby's sex. He promised her that he would have it livable by the time they brought the baby home, and perfect by the time the baby was actually ready to sleep here.

They wiped down all the furniture, and had everything ready to go for when they would need it in just a few more weeks. Because Derek insisted on being surprised with Emily too, they still had plenty of white newborn onesies and blankets, all folded and tucked neatly away. All they needed was the baby, and a paint job. And all of a sudden, what they were doing seemed entirely ridiculous. Why were they getting this room ready if they were planning on moving across the country a few weeks after the baby was born?

The thought of someone else living here, another baby's bare feet on the hardwood, another couple having sex in front of the fireplace in the living room, another family fishing and swimming in the lake, any life lived in this house but hers—it all seemed so wrong. Suddenly, the thought of selling this house was too much to bear.

Derek came and found her a few minutes later. His hair was still wet from his shower, and the floorboards creaked a little as his bare feet padded across them.

"Hey," he said, kissing the top of her head. "How was Joe's?"

"Good," she replied, surprised at the way her voice almost broke; she didn't realize she had gotten so choked up. She cleared her throat and asked, "Did Emily go to sleep ok?"

He nodded. "About an hour ago."

"I'm sorry I'm so late. I actually had to leave Joe's early to check on a patient."

"Everything ok?"

"Yeah, the on-call intern just had a few questions."

"You want to come downstairs?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's just—I need you to help me make this decision," she said, and suddenly she felt the words coming out faster and faster. "I need you to be ok with whatever we decide to do, if we stay or go. I know that you want me to choose what I want to do, but I have to know that you're ok with it. It's your life too," she said, almost defensively. "And I don't want to make you do something you don't want to do, or go somewhere you don't want to go."

"Ok," he replied.

"I think I want to stay," she said quietly. She wasn't sure what she expected, whether she thought he'd jump for joy or gravely tell her she was making a terrible mistake.

All he said, calmly, was, "Ok."

"It's just that we both have jobs here," she said. "And they already know we have Emily and the baby to think about. And Cristina and George are leaving, but Alex and Izzie are staying. And Mark's here for you. And this is our house," she said, unable to keep herself from getting emotional. "We built it. And it's more than just a house. It means more. And the thought of someone else living here is just..."

"I know," he said, so earnestly that she believed he felt the same way about the house and maybe about everything else too. Maybe he really did want to stay all along.

"Are you scared about your mom relapsing?" she asked. She didn't want to ask, especially if asking meant planting a thought in his mind that wasn't there to begin with, but she had to know. "If you are, I'll move East," she said. "Not to Boston; there's nothing for me there but bad memories. But I'll move to New York if that's where you want to be."

He shook his head. "I'm not scared."

"You're not?" she asked, genuinely surprised. For as long as she'd known him, Derek was bold and practically fearless. Seeing him so vulnerable and absolutely terrified while his mother was sick, and knowing that there was nothing she could do about it was the worst part of this ordeal for her. She was so thankful that the Derek she had always known was back.

"I think she's going to be ok," he said.

"You don't want to move back closer to your family?" she asked.

"Meredith," he said, the hint of a smile playing on his lips. "I love my family. I really do. But they do make me a little crazy."

He helped her stand up and he pulled her into a hug. With his arms around her, he kissed her reassuringly and murmured, "I think you made the right decision."

"You do?" she asked. "I don't want you to follow me. I want you next to me. You have to be on board with this one hundred percent."

"I am," he promised. "This is our home."

She turned in his arms so her back was flush against his chest and his arms wrapped around her waist, both hands in hers and one flat against her belly.

"We're going to bring the baby home to this room in a few weeks," he whispered.

"It just needs paint," she agreed. She let the relief wash over her, and the peace she felt about her decision flooded through her. Finally, for one of the first times in her life, she trusted herself to make the right choice the first time. She squeezed Derek's hands a little harder and, looking around the room, she sighed and said, "We're staying."


	29. You can call me papa

_Whenever I think about what I lost,_ _  
_ _I change my mind instead to what I still got_ _  
_ _Cause I've got you, I said I got you_ _  
_ _You can call me Papa, and I'll call you Baby_

* * *

Monday was always the longest day of the week, the day when everyone had to do a little extra to help process the backlogged weekend cases. Derek always had an especially full schedule at the beginning of the week, as he faced the inevitable battles with other department heads, who were all dealing with the same problem, for limited OR space. When he finally collapsed into bed late on the evening of Monday, March 11, Meredith was already asleep and had probably been so for several hours. Within minutes of lying down, he fell almost immediately asleep as well. Until Meredith woke him up.

"Derek?"

He heard her asking for him quietly, but urgently, and felt her hand on his shoulder, but he couldn't make himself open his eyes yet. He was lying on his side, with his back towards her. When he didn't move or say anything else, she shook him again. "Derek, wake up."

Over the past few weeks, as the baby's due date got closer and Meredith grew more uncomfortable and unable to sleep completely through the night, she got in the habit of waking him up for every little thing. Sometimes, she wanted food, and other times she had a thought she wanted to share or a question she wanted to ask. A lot of the time, she was just bored and unable to sleep and wanted him to talk to her. She reasoned that if she had to suffer, he did too, at least for this part. Fortunately, she wasn't a picky conversationalist on these kind of nights. Usually, she would just lay back and close her eyes, and they'd talk about anything. Last night, they played 'would you rather' for over an hour before she finally drifted off to sleep, leaving him to ponder the choice of never cutting his toenails again or never brushing his teeth again.

Before he opened his eyes this time, he half-started to think of a comparably disgusting choice to pose her with. Mostly, he just hoped that she would go back to sleep. "What do you need?" he mumbled.

"I need you to wake up."

He groaned a little and rolled over on to his back, but didn't open his eyes yet. "I'm up."

"No, you're not."

She grew quiet, and for a second, Derek thought that maybe she had given up and would just try to go back to bed on her own, but then she spoke up again. "I'm pretty sure I'm in labor."

Well, he could just forget about sleeping now. He opened his eyes and propped himself up on his elbow to find her facing him, doing the same thing. She looked remarkably calm, completely different from how she behaved when she went into labor with Emily. "Really?" he asked.

"Well, I had some pain this afternoon, but it went away, and now I've been up for a little while and they're regular, about every ten minutes," she said. "So yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"You could have led with that!" he said

"Just wake up when I say to next time!" she countered.

"You want to go to the hospital?" he asked.

"No, let's just wait. It'll be a big enough spectacle when we get there. And we have time. I'm ok."

"We'll just hang out here for awhile then."

The fatigue was still there, nagging at him as much as he tried to fight it. But the excitement of what the next day would bring countered the exhaustion, and lessened his craving for sleep. Both of them laid back down to wait for the next contraction, but after a moment of thought, he propped himself back up.

"Wait, you were having contractions this afternoon?" he asked. "Why didn't you page me?"

"They went away," she said. "I didn't need you."

"You didn't operate this afternoon, did you?"

"No, I just had a few consults. I haven't been on many surgeries this week."

He did that on purpose, and she knew it. Any other time, she would have fought him hard on it, told him that she could take care of herself and exactly where he could go and what he could do when he got there. But as they moved into her ninth month, and he made it his first priority to get her to take it easy, she didn't say anything about her noticeably lighter schedule. He wanted her to get as much rest as she could, and all she really wanted to do for weeks was sleep anyway. They organized her schedule this way without ever talking about it, and now she was only going into labor ten days early. They'd given this baby an extra eleven days that Emily didn't have.

"Does Emily have a bag packed?" Meredith asked.

"She was three weeks early," he replied. "I've had a bag packed for her since the beginning of the month in case this one decided to show up early too."

"Ok." She nodded to herself and closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her forehead with both hands. "What's today? Tuesday?"

"Yeah. It's after midnight, right?" he wondered aloud. He rolled back over a little and saw that the clock by his side of the bed read 1:39. "Yeah, Tuesday."

"Lexie's on-call then," she said, her eyes still closed. "Cristina's not officially on-call, but she's probably at the hospital anyway. I think Alex and Izzie are home, but if not, call Mark, ok?"

"You memorized your friends' schedules?"

She opened her eyes and looked right at him. "I've never done the second kid thing. We needed a couple options for what to do with the first one while we're gone having the second one."

He chuckled at that, but a moment later, when she reached for his arm and gripped hard, turning on her side a little with the pain, he snapped into coach mode. With his free arm, he rubbed her thigh under the covers and let her squeeze his arm as hard as she wanted to.

"Do you need anything?" he asked gently.

"No, I just want you," she replied through gritted teeth.

He tucked a loose lock of hair back behind her ear, and rested his hand on her tensed shoulder. "I'm right here."

They managed to stay in bed for the next two hours, barely changing their original positions. Lying on their sides, they faced each other, sometimes drawing close to each other so she could hug him and sometimes a little further apart while she dozed between contractions. He wanted her to rest as much as she could before it got worse, so they hardly spoke.

Eventually, Meredith pushed against him, trying to use him as leverage to help herself sit up. So far, deep breathing was a sufficient coping technique, but when she woke him up, she had been alert but calm, and within the past twenty minutes or so, she started to get restless. At first, she simply squeezed his arm or his hand with each contraction. Now, she couldn't help but moan a little through the past two or three of them. He silently helped her sit up, with both of their pillows behind her, and that worked for a little while longer. When she started to swing her legs over the side of the bed, he stopped her.

"What do you need?" he asked. "I'll get it for you."

"I want to get in the shower."

"Let me run the water so it's hot, ok?" he said. "Two minutes."

She nodded, and once he had turned the shower in the master bathroom on, he turned around to see her pacing deliberately around the bedroom, both hands splayed across her lower back.

"Is it ready?" she asked.

He nodded, and she nodded gratefully. "Do you want me to get in with you?" he asked, worried that a sharp pain could cause her to slip and fall.

"No."

"I'm just going to sit right here then," he said as he put the lid of the toilet seat down and took a seat.

She nodded and, after stripping her clothes off, stepped into the shower, letting the hot stream of water rain down on her lower back. She sighed with relief, and all he could do was pray that the hot water supply would hold out for as long as she needed.

"That feels better," she said.

With no clock in plain view, Derek lost track of how long they stayed in there and how far apart Meredith's contractions were. They seemed like they were getting stronger, if only because she didn't seem like she could get through them silently anymore, but she still wasn't so far along that she couldn't relax between them. In the minutes between the end of one contraction and the beginning of the next, it almost felt like it was any other morning, and they were just getting ready for work.

"Hey, Mer," he said after a few contractions' worth of silence on his part while he tried to come up with something to take her mind off the pain. "Would you rather eat only mustard for a month, or lick the sidewalk of an entire city block one time?"

"You're disgusting," she said, laughing.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she moaned loudly, like the pain took her by surprise that time. He couldn't see her from where he was sitting, but he heard her hand smack against the shower wall as she tried to find support. Even though the water was helping to take the pain away, he wished she would get out for exactly this reason. He could just see her falling the next time the pain crept up on her unexpectedly.

She got through it with quiet little moans, ones he could barely hear over the rush of the water, and after a few seconds, it was over.

"The street thing," she said.

"Really? You don't know what the hell you're putting your mouth on."

"Yeah, but it would only take five minutes. You'd do the mustard thing?"

"I'd think about it. What city I was in at the time would have a lot to do with my decision."

"Good point."

He tried to think of another one, but before he could pose the question, she cried out, let her voice catch, and then releasing it in quieter, punctuated whimpers.

"Meredith, do you want to go?" he asked.

"No, I'm ok," she said when it was over. "Just don't leave, ok?"

All he wanted to do was put her in the car and go. They could control this in almost every way within the four walls of the hospital. Meredith could have an epidural if she wanted it. A doctor who actually delivered one or two babies after her internship year could preside. It would have made him feel better. But he had to keep reminding himself that it wasn't about making him feel better. He was just nervous, not in any physical pain. If Meredith wanted to stay, then he trusted her to know her body. They could stay.

"I'm not going to leave," he assured her.

They let the rest of the night pass that way, alternating getting in and out of the shower for as long as the hot water held out. Meredith's fingers were still thoroughly wrinkled when she got back in the shower just before dawn. After the first shower, Derek changed into a short-sleeved t-shirt and stuck his entire arm into the water for her to use for support. All of a sudden, he heard a splash, like she was wringing her hair out and lots of water was hitting the floor all at once. In that moment, she gripped his arm so hard that she nearly broke the skin. She was quiet, but he heard her perfectly clearly when she said, "My water broke."

It had taken hours and hours to get to this point with Emily, and frankly, he was a little stunned that it was happening now after only five with this baby. He wondered how much time they had left, and he couldn't help but ask her, "Can we go to the hospital now?"

She didn't hesitate before replying, "Yeah, we need to go. Can you call Izzie?"

She turned the water off, and when she stepped carefully out of the shower, he had a dry towel waiting for her. "I'll get dressed and wake up Emily," she said.

"No, no, no. Just get dressed," he said. "I'll get her. We probably shouldn't let her wake up too much. Hopefully she'll go back to sleep once she gets to their house."

He made a quick phone call to Izzie to let her know they would be dropping Emily off there in a little while, and then waited while Meredith changed and blow-dried her hair until it was only slightly damp instead of soaking wet. He then helped her settle on the living room couch, and dashed back upstairs to get Emily.

He knew he was probably forgetting a million things, and he tried to go through what some of them might be while he pulled Emily's covers back. They had Meredith's bag and Emily's duffel containing a change of clothes and some things for her to play with, and he guessed that was all that really mattered. He rummaged through Emily's top dresser drawer for some socks to put on her bare feet, and then scooped her up into his arms. Her blonde hair was unruly, and if he could have pulled it back without waking her up, he would have, just so he could see around it well enough to get down the steps without breaking an ankle.

When he got downstairs, Meredith was standing ready with Emily's coat, and he held her while she threaded Emily's arms through the sleeves.

"Daddy?" Emily mumbled, lifting her head up as if to look around but without ever opening her eyes.

"Em, we're going to take you to Izzie and Alex's house, ok?" he said in a voice that was almost softer than a whisper, hoping that she would think they got called in to see a patient and not that Meredith was going to be the patient. "Mommy and I have to go to the hospital. Just try to go back to sleep and we'll see you tomorrow."

When they loaded Emily into her car seat, she was still extremely groggy and he hoped that she would just fall back to sleep. He didn't know if it was the cold air or the noise they were trying to keep to a minimum, or just the simple act of being woken from a sound sleep, but Emily spent the first five minutes of the ride waking up, not falling back to sleep.

Meredith's contractions were still seven minutes apart, but it seemed like as soon as her water broke, the pain intensified that much more, hitting her like a ton of bricks. She had her eyes closed and her lips pursed like she was trying so hard to be absolutely silent. Her entire body tensed, and though she tried her best, she couldn't help but whimper a little when her contractions peaked.

"Mom?" Emily asked. When Meredith couldn't respond, she asked again, her voice wavering.

Meredith shook her head and gripped her chair's arm rest, and Derek glanced in the rearview at Emily, who was now wide awake. "Mommy's ok, Em," he said.

"Why is Mommy hurting?"

"The baby is ready to come out, and that makes Mommy's belly hurt," he explained. "Remember how we talked about that?"

"I'm ok, Em," Meredith said as soon as she could. She turned a little in her seat so she could look at Emily. "We'll see you in a little bit. Alex and Izzie will bring you to the hospital as soon as they can."

Though they tried to explain and comfort as best they could, by the time they made it to Alex and Izzie's house a little while later, Emily was nearly in tears. He parked in the driveway, and scooped Emily into his arms, realizing that she didn't have any shoes on. He couldn't even remember if they put an extra pair in her bag for her.

"We'll see you really soon, ok, Bean?" he said, trying not to rush so much that she would notice. He slung her bag over his shoulder and started to carry her up the steps to the house, but Emily leaned out of his arms and cried, "Mommy!"

Meredith opened her door, and Emily reached out from Derek's arms for a reassuring hug and kiss. "I'm ok," Meredith promised. "Everything's ok. You don't have to be scared, I'll see you soon."

Emily nodded hesitantly, convincing neither of them, but Derek shut Meredith's door and carried Emily up to the open front door.

Alex and Izzie, still in their pajamas, held the storm door open for them and ushered them inside. Derek set Emily in her stocking feet down on the floor, but as soon as he did, she turned and reached to be picked up again.

He didn't want to oblige her, knowing that it would take another ten minutes to get out the door and continue on to the hospital if he did, but Alex picked her up without a word instead.

"Hey, buddy, you're going to be a big sister!" Izzie said, and Derek hoped that some of her enthusiasm would transfer to Emily. "Where's Mer?"

"She's in the car."

"How is she?"

"She's good," he said, feeling a strong sense of urgency to get back to her. "She's managing."

"Tell her we can't wait to see the baby!" Izzie said. "And that there is no shame in an epidural."

He smiled. "I'll let her know."

"Should we take her to school?" Izzie asked, taking Emily's bag from Derek.

At the mere mention of school, Emily's eyes filled with tears and she looked at him with such horror on her face, with a look that said plainly, 'Please don't make me.'

"Actually," Izzie said gently, taking note of Emily's reaction. "I'm going to take a sick day, so if your dad says it's ok, you can hang out at our house for awhile. We can watch movies and bake cupcakes, whatever you want."

"You don't have to go to school today," he told Emily, before turning to Izzie. "I'll call her out of school as soon as we get to the hospital."

Emily nodded, and her voice broke on the words, "I want my mom."

Alex held on to her a little more tightly, anticipating that she might try to squirm, and Izzie touched her arm and gently said, "You'll get to see your mom really soon. We just need to let the baby come out and then we can go see her."

"No, I want her right now."

"Em, Mommy's ok," Derek said. He kissed Emily's forehead and whispered, "I promise I'll take good care of her. And I promise I'll call as soon as you can come see her and Roo. We just need you to be a good girl for Alex and Izzie while we're gone. Can you do that?"

Emily nodded, but still said tearfully, "I want Mommy."

"I know," he said, wondering how long he left Meredith alone. "I have to go, I'm sorry," he said with one last kiss. "I love you, Bean, and I'll see you soon."

"Is she ok?" Meredith asked as soon as he got back in the car.

He chose to tell a white lie for everyone's good rather than tell her that they left her crying, and said, "She's fine."

* * *

They managed to get upstairs to labor and delivery fairly quickly, since they got to the hospital before most doctors they knew started their day shift. Once they got Meredith through the preliminary tests, the nurse, a woman named Jacqui who started a 12-hour shift about ten minutes before, strapped a fetal monitor around her belly and helped her settle in. She promised that Dr. McNally would be in to see her in a few minutes, and that they should page her if they needed anything.

Meredith shifted in bed, trying to settle and find a comfortable position. It felt like she had an evil twin or something, someone who took her place when the pain started and wouldn't leave until it was over. When she was resting, she was the same person she always was, but when she had to work through a contraction, she was someone else entirely.

He pulled up a chair next to the bed and said, "I'll bet you twenty bucks you're more than five centimeters."

She smiled. "I'll take that bet. But I don't want your money."

"Ok, what do you want then?" he asked.

"The first unbelievable neuro case that comes through here after my maternity leave, I'm the resident on it."

"That would be some pretty blatant favoritism, Dr. Grey," he said, grinning.

"Does anyone really think I'm not your favorite?"

"Good point."

They only had to get through one contraction before Dr. Regina McNally came in, bright-eyed and pleasant as usual. She wore her black hair in a loose braid, and she was already dressed in scrubs, though he wasn't sure if she was here already or had been called in for them.

"Hey, Meredith!" she said. She glanced down at the chart in her hands and said, "Man, you two have some early bird kids, don't you?"

"Seems to be the case."

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm ok," Meredith replied.

"Good," Dr. McNally replied. She took a few seconds to observe the printout coming from the fetal monitor, indicating that the baby's heart rate was quite strong, and then she rolled Meredith's hospital gown up and felt around her stomach.

"Ok, well everything looks good here. The baby's heart rate is strong. Head's down. I'm just going to check you and see where we are."

Dr. McNally pushed up the sheet, snapped on a glove, and Meredith let her legs fall open. "Right around four centimeters," she announced a moment later.

Meredith smiled, and raised her arms in triumph. "Just pencil me in, Derek. There's an open brain with my name on it around the middle of May."

"I'm sorry?" Dr. McNally said.

"I bet her a surgery that she was more than five centimeters," he explained.

"Nice," Dr. McNally chuckled. "Wish I could have done that with my kids. My husband's an accountant, he'd want to bet me a tax return or something," she said. "Well, Meredith, it looks like you're doing great for now, so just try to relax. I'll be back in to check on you in a little while, but if you need me for anything, just page your nurse and she'll get you set up."

Derek smoothed the sheet over her legs and helped her settle in for the long haul. He noticed that she was much calmer since arriving at the hospital, and he wondered if she too had started to get freaked out at the pace of it all while they were still at home. While they waited, he got her some ice chips, held her hands, smoothed her hair off her face, and did everything she asked him to do, but it didn't seem like enough. All he could really do was wait, and help her to wait too.

They let an hour tick by slowly, quietly. He kept the lights off in her room, spoke only when she spoke first, and he kept his voice at a low murmur.

When someone knocked at the door, he expected it to be their nurse or Dr. McNally, but it was Cristina's head that poked through the door.

"Hey, is it ok to come in?" she asked quietly. "Is she asleep?"

"I'm awake," Meredith said. She kept her eyes closed, and still looked almost zen-like when she told Cristina to come in.

Cristina stood awkwardly at the foot of Meredith's bed, with her arms at her side. She looked like she didn't know what to do but still felt like she should be there anyway. Though he often butted heads with Cristina, and early on, he felt like he had to compete with her for Meredith's attention, he could appreciate her now, for what she gave to Meredith. In seven years, she never left Meredith's side.

"Cristina?" Meredith asked, her eyes still closed. He looked at his watch, and realized that the next contraction would probably come in about three minutes, but for now, she was at peace.

"I'm here," she replied quickly.

"How did you know we were here?"

"Well, Izzie called," she said, "But I heard it from Michelle, one of the nurses down on Two, way before then. You know the one with the red hair?"

"How did she know?" Meredith asked. "She's a Med/Surg nurse."

"I don't know who she heard it from, but you'd think a celebrity was in here. News travels fast."

"Pretty sure that violates HIPAA in about a hundred ways," Meredith said.

"Are you surprised? By the way, Lexie says hi. She didn't want to come up here and bother you."

"But you had no problem coming up," Derek said, though he didn't really mind, not anymore.

Cristina shrugged. "You'll kick me out if you want me to leave."

He raised an eyebrow, and then turned back to Meredith, checking his watch again. There was something comforting in the pain and the process-a rhythm, a pattern. They had two minutes, probably less time before it got worse, before she wasn't calm anymore. He didn't want to leave her alone, but he needed a minute to pee, to call his mother and maybe Emily, to collect himself before he had to be her rock.

"Actually, can you stay for a minute?" he asked Cristina. "I just need to-"

"Derek, call your mom, ok?" Meredith said, "And Emily." She sucked in a breath as the next contraction started a little sooner than he anticipated, and Cristina stood there silently, looking slightly horrified while he helped Meredith through it.

When it was over, he decided to seize that window of opportunity. "Are you ok for a few minutes?" he asked. "I'll be right back."

"I'm ok," she assured him. Cristina nodded as well, and slipped into the seat he vacated.

He rushed out, made his phone calls, and rushed back, only to settle into the slow, onerous pace of labor. Cristina left them alone, and Meredith told her that she would see her later. To him, it was amazing. She wasn't frenzied, wasn't borderline panicked the way she was when she was in labor with Emily. In the beginning at least, she knew what to expect, and knew she could manage.

By nine-thirty, they had been there for almost three hours, and Meredith's calm was slowly slipping away. Her eyes flew open with every contraction now, like she was surprised by how much and how quickly the pain was intensifying.

"Derek," she groaned, rolling over onto her back before trying to sit up. "I want to move. I need to move."

"Do you want to take a walk?" he asked quietly. It seemed like it was going faster this time. Though he didn't remember much beyond common knowledge about labor and delivery, he knew that gravity could definitely be a factor, and he was certainly willing to try it if that's what she wanted.

"No, I just-oh God," she cried out. "I need to take the pressure off my back."

"Why don't you sit up then? I'll rub your back." He helped her sit up, and then he braced her, his forehead against hers while she fought her way through the pain.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and laid her head down on his shoulder. He wrapped one arm around her body, and his free hand clasped hers in one tight fist, pushing into the mattress. They waited, and when the pain hit again, when Meredith grabbed the back of his t-shirt, pulled, and moaned loudly, he rubbed her lower back and prayed that he was doing it right.

"No, don't rub," she said, releasing a breath that she didn't realize she was holding. "Just push down."

He immediately changed what he was doing, and pushed against the lower part of her spine with the heel of his palm. "Like that?"

"Yeah," she said, "More. That's a little better."

"Meredith, do you want the epidural?" he asked. "They'd give it to you now."

"No, I don't need it yet," she said through gritted teeth. A few seconds later, she let her breath go, and sighed, "Ok."

"Ok?"

"Yeah."

Eventually, when the pressure on her lower back got to be too much, Meredith asked to stand up. He positioned her with her back towards the bed, just in case she needed to sit down or take a break. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he held her up, both hands on her lower back. He could literally feel her stomach getting tight every few minutes. He tried to counteract the pressure she was feeling in her back as best he could, with two fists pushing hard to make circles on her lower back, but he wasn't sure how much it was helping.

The minutes, maybe hours, passed without any way to really keep track. He couldn't see the clock, as it was on the wall behind him, and he didn't dare take his hands away from the only spot that was giving Meredith any relief to check his watch. "You're doing great. It won't be much longer," he whispered.

"How do you know that?"

"I'll bet you another surgery."

"Meredith, how are we doing?" Dr. McNally asked a few minutes later with a knock at the door. Meredith didn't answer, and for Dr. McNally, that was answer enough.

"Let's just check your progress really quickly," she said. "And then you can stand back up. Can you lie down for me for a second?"

"Over or under seven?" Derek said, trying to smile for her sake, even though the stress of seeing her in so much pain was starting to wear on him. He helped her lie down on the bed and said, "A DBS procedure says over."

She shook her head, too exhausted to do anything but try to relax as much as possible between contractions. He realized then that he could try to keep her spirits up, to keep her joking, all he wanted, but for her, the time for playing had passed. Now, she could only be serious, and he could only try his best to help her through.

"Just about a seven," Dr. McNally said in a pleased tone. "Fifty percent effaced, baby's at minus-1 station."

He wasn't sure if he detected a hint of surprise in her voice, or if he was projecting his own surprise on to her. Already a seven. That had to mean this would be over soon, right? Meredith nodded, with a hint of a tired smile on her lips, like she was praying for the same thing.

"The baby looks great, Meredith," she assured her. "Did you want something for the pain? We're kind of getting to the end of that window."

She acted like she hadn't heard the doctor, and didn't react at all until the doctor called her name. "Meredith?"

"I'm ok," she said, after a few seconds.

"Are you sure?" he asked incredulously. He kind of wanted her to take it. If their roles were switched, he would have taken it now if he hadn't begged for it already.

But Meredith shook her head. "I'm fine."

They made it through a few more contractions standing up, but it seemed like the perks of that position were disappearing fast. When Nurse Jacqui came in to check on her about a half hour after Dr. McNally left, Derek mentioned the shower to her, and she was happy to run the water for Meredith.

The hot shower got Meredith almost to lunchtime, but by then, her sanity had started to unravel. He stood outside the shower curtain, his shirt-sleeve completely soaked as she held onto his arm, boring into the skin so hard that she nearly broke it. The pain relief this offered her at home didn't seem to be doing a damn thing now.

"I can't," she cried, during what seemed like a particularly vicious contraction that seemed to wear on and on. "I can't, I can't. Page anesthesiology, Derek."

"You can do this," he said. The words came out less soothing than he hoped, since he had to make sure she heard them over the dull roar of the water, but they needed to be said regardless. "You are doing this," he said. "Even if you think you can't, you're already doing it. But I'm going to page anesthesiology right now, ok? They're on their way," he assured her, even though he hadn't actually left yet.

Within minutes, there was a flurry of activity in Meredith's room. As soon as they got her out of the shower, in a gown, and back into bed, the nurse checked her progress and let them know, much to Meredith's dismay, that she was still at seven centimeters and that the baby's head was still fairly high up in the pelvis. The good news was that she could have the epidural.

Next thing he knew, the anesthesiologist, a man about his age named David Barrera strolled into the room. They both worked with him on several surgeries over the years, but their relationship had been nothing beyond cursory, professional. But now Meredith was looking at him like he was the second coming of Christ.

"Dr. Grey, Dr. Shepherd, congratulations," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Either work your magic or put a bullet in my head," Meredith groaned.

With Emily, the pain was incremental, slow to progress, and though it seemed scarier because it was the first time, it was somehow easier to manage. Now, everything was sharp and fast and intense and there was no relief even when the fetal monitor said there should be. Meredith was louder with Emily, but she didn't actually have tears in her eyes.

"Ok, well what we'd do at this point is a combined spinal-epidural, which will give you four to eight hours of pain relief, which will probably be plenty of time. It'll also give you the ability to move around a little more freely, so that's a positive thing. We'll inject the anesthetic into the epidural space, and within fifteen to twenty minutes, you should feel totally fine."

Meredith sighed and nodded eagerly, and he continued. "Obviously, you're a doctor, you're aware of the risks, but I have to go over them anyway. An epidural can make pushing more difficult, leading to an increased risk of forceps or vacuum during delivery, or possibly a c-section. For you, it's unlikely, but an epidural can cause a drop in your BP or a spinal headache. For the baby, an epidural can cause respiratory depression, some increased heart rate variability, and difficulty with breastfeeding, Again, all of these risks are small, and you are an excellent candidate for the procedure, but I am obligated to tell you."

"I don't want it," Meredith said, shaking her head.

"Meredith, those risks are small," Derek said. He knew Dr. Barrera was only doing his job, but in that moment he could have killed him. She was so ready to accept relief, and then he scared her out of it. "A ton of women have epidurals every day, and they're fine and their babies are fine," he said quietly. "If you need one, then there's nothing wrong with getting one."

"No, no, no," she said. "I can do it. I don't need it, I just want it. Seven, right?"

"Yeah, you're at a seven."

"I did it with Emily," she said, for herself much more than for him. "I can do it now. I don't want surgery."

"You won't need a c-section," he promised.

"And I don't want the baby to have any problems breathing," she gasped out as a contraction started to build. "It's already ten days early. I can do it."

"Are you sure?" he asked

She curled into the pain, but gritted out a, "Yes."

Derek shrugged. Once her mind was made up, it was made up. He turned to Dr. Barrera, who offered him a sympathetic smile. "Don't go too far," Derek told him. "Just in case."

"Of course," he replied. "Congratulations."

Meredith only made it through one more contraction after Barrera left before she reached for Derek and cried, "I can't do it anymore."

"You just said you can, remember?" he said. "Just keep thinking that way."

"What the fuck did I know then?" Meredith cried. "Why did you send him away?"

"You want me to get him back?"

"Yes!"

"Ok, I'll have the nurse page him in a second," he promised.

She shook her head as another contraction started to build, and practically begged him in a long, protracted, "Now."

"Ok," he nodded soothingly. "Now."

He hit the call button next to the bed to get Jacqui back in here, and by the time she got to the room, the contraction was over, and Meredith had calmed down a little. "I don't need drugs," she said. "I'm ok."

Jacqui, who hadn't announced herself, looked at Derek with a raised eyebrow, like she was waiting for instruction on what to do. Derek shrugged, and turned to Meredith to ask, "So do you want me to cancel that page?"

"Yeah."

Jacqui smiled sympathetically, and silently left the room. Before she did, she held her hand up to her face in the shape of a telephone, gesturing to Derek to page her again if they needed to.

"Hey," he murmured, drawing close to Meredith. Her eyes were squinted closed, and she was still curled up, like the pain of it all, even though she wasn't actually feeling it now, had put her body in a vice. "Just relax when it's not happening, ok?" he said, smoothing her hair off her face. "I'm really proud of you. You're doing so well. But if you want an epidural, you should get one."

"Do you think I should?" she asked.

He reached over to the tray that Jacqui set up next to the bed, set up with a pitcher of water, a water bottle with a straw, two plastic kidney-shaped emesis basins, and a washcloth. He poured some water over the washcloth and rung it out, sponging some cool moisture onto Meredith's sweaty brow and neck.

"I think you should do whatever feels better for you," he said. "I'm not the one who has to do this, you are."

"I did it naturally with Emily," she said, almost sighing with the relief the cool water brought. "Right now, I don't know how, but I did. I need to remember that."

"Ok," he murmured. "Are you sure?"

"No," she said, laughing even just the tiniest bit, but it was enough to let him know that she was really ok despite all of this. "In a little while, I'm going to forget I said that," she said. "I need you to remind me. Don't leave, ok?"

"I'd never leave," he assured her. "I'll be right here the whole time. It's going fast, this is almost over."

About an hour later, out of nowhere, and sudden enough that it took him by surprise, Meredith's teeth started to chatter and her entire body started to tremble. She twisted towards him and then the other way until she was flat on her back again, and gasped at him with her mouth agape. With a long, guttural moan, she reached for his hand.

"Oh my God," she cried.

"Do you want to change positions?" he asked helplessly. He didn't know what else to suggest, or what could possibly help, but she quickly shot him down. He paged the doctor back in, but while they were waiting, she cried out again. It seemed like they had only thirty or forty seconds now between the end of one contraction and the beginning of the next, not nearly enough time for Meredith to relax and catch her breath.

"Tell me," Meredith begged. She was gritting her teeth to keep from screaming, only letting out short gusts of air and staccato little moans. He wished she would just scream if that's what she wanted to do. She didn't need to suffer in silence for his or anyone else's benefit.

"Tell me," she said again when it seemed like that one was over.

Tell her what? He had no idea what she was talking about, or what she wanted to hear, or if it would even help. At the end, with Emily, all she wanted was quiet. He tried to talk to her, to touch her, to do anything he could think of, but she didn't want any part of it. He remembered that she kept shaking her head when he was talking, but he thought it was just from the pain until she actually yell at him to shut up. Now, though, it seemed like she wanted his voice, and even though he didn't know what to say, he just started talking.

"You're doing so well," he said. "You can do this. You're ok, I think you're transitioning." The words were pouring out now, and he was saying them faster than he could think about them. She nodded and he kept going. "Think about Emily. Remember when she was born, how this part didn't matter anymore as soon as it was over? It's hard, but you know it's worth it. And you know you can do it. You've done it already, and you're doing it again now. As soon as the baby's out, I'm going to call Izzie. Emily can't wait to come see you. She's going to be a great big sister, don't you think?"

At the onset of the next contraction, Meredith pursed her lips, and he could see the color drain from her face. She tried to sit up a little more, to reach for the second emesis basin on the tray next to the bed, but he got to it before she could. He held it for her, and rubbed her back as she vomited.

Tears rolled down her cheeks as it ended and she laid back down. She couldn't stop trembling, but when he tried to pull the blankets up around her, she pushed them away. She took a tiny sip from the water bottle he held out to her, and he wondered where the hell Dr. McNally was.

"You're ok," he said. "Everything's ok. It's almost over. I owe you so many surgeries."

She couldn't bring herself to smile, but said quite tiredly, "Yeah, you do."

"Meredith," Dr. McNally said gently as she and Jacqui entered the room and took stock of her surroundings. "How are we doing?"

Jacqui handed Dr. McNally a clean glove and started to clear away the emesis basins. Dr. McNally sat down on the edge of the bed and as soon as she pulled the sheets away Meredith's legs fell open so she could examine her. Meredith groaned a little at the discomfort, but nodded gratefully when the doctor said, "Meredith, it won't be long now, ok? You're right at a nine, one hundred percent effaced. It's going to go fast, I promise. The baby is right there. You're doing an awesome, awesome job."

Dr. McNally turned to Jacqui and told her to go ahead and get Meredith ready to deliver. She promised that she only needed to check quickly on one patient, but would be back in a few minutes.

Derek glanced at the clock on the wall and was amazed that all of this had only taken twelve hours. He knew every labor was different, especially from the first to the second baby, but he couldn't help but compare to Emily. That last centimeter took almost an hour with her, but it seemed like Dr. McNally thought it might take only minutes this time.

He felt like a helpless bystander. Jacqui was busy breaking down the bed and getting the room ready for the baby, and obviously, Meredith was doing all the hard work as her body tried to bring the baby down and finish what it started. All he could do was try to anticipate what she needed before she had to ask.

He pressed a cool washcloth to her forehead and neck again, and while they waited for Dr. McNally to come back, Meredith suddenly curled forward and moaned, "Oh my God."

Dr. McNally walked back in, but neither of them paid her any attention as Meredith cried out, "Oh my God, I have to push."

"Meredith," Dr. McNally said, standing by her bedside. "I'm right here, go ahead and push when you need to."

She barely waited for the doctor's approval before she bore down hard, grunting with the effort of it. She screwed up her face, and tried to keep going as long as she could.

Dr. McNally glanced at the space between her legs almost nonchalantly, like she wasn't expecting anything to happen, but within a few seconds, she exclaimed, "Oh, good job!" Turning to Jacqui, she said, "Ok, let's get ready to go. Gown and gloves, please."

Jacqui helped her get geared up, she sat down at the foot of the bed, and then they waited. The contractions had slowed a little bit, giving Meredith a little time to rest between each one. With Emily, this part took two hours. Even he didn't think it would take anywhere near that long this time.

Meredith looked exhausted, but determined. He couldn't help but get excited, knowing that this was all going to be over soon and the baby they had waited so long for would be in their arms.

"Meredith, just push when you feel a contraction, ok? You're doing great, the baby's coming down well."

Her next few pushes were calm, but deliberate and effective. He never moved from her side, never let go of her hand, but leaned forward a little to glance over her bended knee to see for himself.

"The baby's right there," he said, unable to hide his surprise at the sight of the top of a head already.

"Really?" she asked, just as surprised as he was.

"Yeah, a couple more pushes and you'll be done."

"Oh," she groaned. "Can I push now?"

"Yeah, go for it," Dr. McNally grinned, and just seconds later, she said, "Ok, stop. The baby's starting to crown, Meredith. Just let it come."

"I can't," Meredith said, in the middle of a contraction.

"Meredith," Dr. McNally said carefully, "Don't push, just take some deep breaths. I don't want you to tear. We're going to do this part nice and slow, ok?"

"Deep breaths," he reminded her. "Nice and slow."

It wasn't until after the contraction ended that she was able to actually make her body slow down and do what the doctor asked. "It burns," she said. "It's burning."

"I know," he said soothingly. "You're doing great. I love you. The baby's almost here."

"Little pushes with the next contraction," Dr. McNally reminded her. "You go when you need to."

Meredith groaned, and squeezed his hand hard. She leaned forward again and bore down with short, grunting pushes, but he wasn't focusing on her anymore. He was watching the baby make its way out, centimeter by centimeter, as she worked. He felt her gripping his hand tightly, heard her scream, but only watched the baby's head finally slide out into the doctor's hands.

"The head's out, Mer," he exclaimed. "Oh my God."

"Meredith, don't push, ok?" Dr. McNally said. "The baby has a nuchal cord."

Meredith panted, and laid her head back down on the pillow while she waited. Her brow glistened with sweat, and her hair was messy and matted down on her forehead. He smoothed it back for her while Dr. McNally suctioned the baby's nose and mouth and slipped the looped cord from around the neck as quickly as she could. As soon as she gave Meredith the all-clear to push again, it only took one more effort before the baby was in the doctor's hands, and then on Meredith's chest.

"Derek," she said, cradling the slimy, wriggling infant in her arms as Jacqui reached in with warm towels. The baby let out an impressive shriek, pinking up with every second, and Meredith couldn't stop saying, "Oh my God, oh my God."

Derek felt almost like he was floating; he was that light with happiness. He watched as Jacqui wiped the baby's face down and tried to keep him covered and warm. He was so enthralled with the child's dark hair and button nose, features that were identical to Emily's when she was born, that he didn't even think to look between the baby's legs until Dr. McNally prompted them.

"So," she said knowingly, "What do we have?"

"It's a boy!" he said, stunned and joyous, with tears running down his cheeks. He had a son. They had a son.

Meredith burst into tears, and held the baby that much closer. "Is he ok?"

"He looks great," Dr. McNally said, smiling while she clamped the baby's cord in two places. "Does he have a name yet?"

They went over what felt like hundreds of names over the past few months, for boys and for girls, and though they had narrowed it down to a short list, they hadn't decided on anything yet. They knew what Emily's name would be, if she did in fact turn out to be a girl, well before she was born, but with this baby, it had been more difficult to reach a consensus.

"No, not yet," he replied.

Meredith couldn't take her eyes off the baby, cradling him against her with one arm and outlining his features so gently with the tip of a finger. "Hey, little boy," she murmured when he gripped one of her fingers, his chin quivering as he kept crying. "He's big."

"He's bigger than Emily," he agreed. He leaned in and cupped her face with one hand, and kissed her. He couldn't even begin to explain to her how happy, how grateful, how absolutely awed he was by her, and their son, and their life together. "I love you," he said. "So much."

"I love you too."

"Derek, can you cut between the clamps for me?" Dr. McNally asked, passing him a pair of surgical scissors. When he did, Jacqui took the crying baby from Meredith's arms and brought him over to the warmer. "We'll bring him right back," Dr. McNally promised. "We're just going to weigh and measure him, and wrap him up for you."

"He's here," Meredith said breathlessly, after he kissed her again.

Derek nodded. He couldn't quite believe it himself. "He's finally here."

"Seven pounds, six ounces, guys," Jacqui called out to them. "Twenty inches long."

"Go stay with him," Meredith urged him. "Go."

The baby cried and cried, testing out his lungs while Jacqui stamped his footprints on a piece of paper, wrapped a hospital bracelet around his wrist, and administered eyedrops. She wiped him down thoroughly, but gently, and then swaddled him tightly in a white blanket.

The next thing he knew, his son was in his arms, staring up at him with the remnants of tears in the creases of his eyes. The baby, whimpering now instead of wailing, felt warm and solid in his arms. Like Emily, this baby's hair was dark, almost black, but hers was wispy and his was a lot thicker. His eyes were a lighter grayish-blue, closer to Meredith's color, but Emily was born with lighter eyes too and they darkened to a deeper blue after a few months. He was bigger than Emily by a little more than two pounds. His chest was rounder, his cheeks pudgier, but all in all, he looked a lot like his sister.

He brought the baby over to Meredith and laid him gently in her arms, then wiped a few tears out of his own eyes. The baby looked around, whimpering intermittently, but when Meredith touched his face and started talking so quietly and soothingly to him, he stilled. Jacqui brought over some hospital bracelets that matched the baby's for he and Meredith, and she slipped a tiny pink and blue knit hat on his head.

Derek moved his chair a little closer to her bedside, and kissed the top of her head before he sat down. Dr. McNally was cleaning Meredith up, delivering the placenta and sewing a few stitches and doing all of the things that would have probably commanded at least a little of their attention in any other circumstances. When she was going to do something to Meredith, or needed Meredith to do something, she told her, and Meredith complied thoughtlessly. She had the baby in her arms, and that was all that mattered.

* * *

When Dr. McNally finished and they got the baby started on nursing, she left the three of them alone, with the promise that she would come back to check on them in a little while. Roo took to breastfeeding like a champ and now settled in his mother's arms with a full belly. He was alert, or he at least had his eyes open and was looking up at them like he wanted to see them.

Derek slipped off the baby's hat for a second, just to get another look at the head full of dark hair that already had a bit of a curl to it. They unwrapped him for a moment, just to count his fingers and toes, and look at his knees and elbows and his round little belly. They touched his cheeks and his earlobes and the tip of his nose. And if he didn't consciously realize it the second this baby was born, Derek knew it now; he was utterly in love with him.

"I know we talked about a lot of other names," Meredith said softly after awhile. "And this wasn't even on the list. But I think I want to name him after your dad. I want to name him Jack."

She looked down at the baby while she spoke, but then up at him expectantly. He could tell that she thought this gesture would be something profoundly meaningful to him, and it was, it was just...the name Jack was tied to as much pain as it was to happiness.

He had only been the father of a son for an hour, but already, he had this whole future planned out of baseball games and fishing trips-all things that had been taken away from him forever when he was eleven years old. His family talked about his father all the time, and he was able to smile and laugh at the fond memories, but that didn't mean he didn't wish bitterly that that part of his life was radically different from what it was. Could he really say that name probably dozens of times a day for the rest of his life without feeling the same way he did now, mixing grief with joy?

He didn't say anything, but Meredith kept going. "I was just thinking about it and none of the boys in your family are named Jack," she offered.

"Their middle names," he murmured, unable to take his eyes off his son, who was starting to doze a little in Meredith's arms. "Some of them."

"I think it would be nice," she murmured, smoothing her hand lovingly over her son's hat-covered head. "Your family lights up when they hear that name."

"Can we think about it?" he asked.

"Oh," Meredith said. She took only a second to recover before she told him that of course they could, but he knew that she expected a resounding, maybe even a grateful, yes and he hated that he couldn't give it to her.

"I'm sorry, it's just that," he sighed, trailing off. "I don't know, it's complicated."

"It's ok," she said, before turning back to the perfect baby in her arms. "He's really beautiful, isn't he?"

"Yeah, he is," he murmured.

"Do you want to hold him for awhile?" Meredith asked. "I'm just kind of..."

Suddenly, he noticed how absolutely exhausted she looked and sounded, and quickly, he put aside his concerns and let her gingerly shift the baby into his arms.

"Get some rest," he told her. "Roo and I need to have a little chat."

She nodded, closed her eyes, then opened them again. "Derek, I love you."

He leaned forward, over the baby, and kissed her. "I love you too."

"Call Emily."

"I will."

"Derek?"

"Yeah?"

"There are some paint chips in the kitchen drawer. Use the middle blue one."

He chuckled. "Get some rest."

She closed her eyes, and he sat back in his chair and let the baby settle against him. He knew it was possible to do it-he never doubted that his parents loved him, Nancy, Maggie, and Anne any less than Kathleen-but he was still kind of shocked at the intensity of it, how quickly he loved this little boy just as much as Emily and more than life itself.

"Big day, huh?" he murmured to the baby who was staring up at him. "What do you think so far?"

Derek held him close, patting his bottom gently while he blew little spit bubbles. Two years ago, he didn't think he would ever have a moment like this again. But he would have done it all again. All of it. The grief, the pain, the fear, the doubt-it was all worth it now, and it was enough to choke him up.

"I can't believe you're here," he whispered. "We waited a long time for you."

He looked up at Meredith, curled up in bed, breathing peacefully with her eyes closed. Her hair was still damp from her earlier shower and from sweat. She needed two stitches and had to have been sore as all hell. But she had the faintest hint of a smile on her face.

It was shocking, but not strange to know that the baby in his arms was the one they had been waiting for, for much longer than nine months. It felt almost unbelievable that he had a son now, that he and Meredith had two kids. He felt confident that he had the Daddy's little girl thing down, and wondered about the ways that his relationship with his son would be different from his relationship with his daughter. The baby stared up at him, blinking in the light, and Derek couldn't help but wonder if maybe his father thought the same things forty-some years ago, when he had two small daughters at home and a nurse had just settled his newborn son into his arms.

"Meredith?" he asked, but she didn't answer. .

"I think you wore Mommy out," he said, shifting him so he was upright but flush against his chest. He rubbed his back in slow circles, and pressed his lips to the top of the baby's head. "She wants to call you Jack, after your Pop," he said quietly, taking a deep breath. "It's not that I don't like that name, it's just that I miss Pop all the time, and I don't know if I can..."

He patted the baby's back, and then laid one hand gently on his back, supporting his bottom with the other while the baby fell into a sleepy state.

"You couldn't ask for a better guy to be named after. He was just the best dad anybody could want. For awhile, I didn't miss him as much," he sighed. "After he was gone for a long time, it was just something that kind of became part of me. It still hurt, but I didn't think about it as much. But when your sister was born, it made me realize that if he loved us half as much as I loved her...it just wasn't fair that he died. There wasn't enough time. It wasn't fair at all."

He kissed the top of the baby's head again, and whispered, "I can't believe you're finally here."

He held him for he didn't know how long. An hour ago, everything was loud and hectic. Now, it was almost startlingly calm. The baby's breathing was peaceful and slow, Meredith was asleep, and he was completely sated.

A soft knock came at the door, and Jacqui peeked her head inside. "Dr. Shepherd, they're ready for him in the nursery," she said. "Do you mind if we take him down and get him checked out and cleaned up? We'll bring him back in a little while if you like."

"Ok," he nodded.

Jacqui wheeled in an isolette into the room and scooped the baby gently out of Derek's arms. "Does she need anything?" she asked, motioning to Meredith as she situated the baby comfortably.

Derek shook his head. "Sleep, more than anything else."

"Ok, well if you'd like to get some rest as well, I can bring a pillow and some blankets."

He nodded, suddenly feeling quite tired himself. "I'm actually going to go make some calls. If she wakes up..."

"We'll find you," Jacqui promised.

He called Izzie first and told her to bring Emily to the hospital in a few hours when Meredith would be awake, and then spent a few minutes talking to Emily, mostly reassuring her that Meredith really was ok. He tried to call his mother, but her phone went right to voicemail and he hung up without leaving a message, assuming that she was on a plane to Seattle.

When he got back to Meredith's room, someone had dropped off a pillow and some blankets for him, and he managed to get a little over an hour of uninterrupted sleep before Meredith woke him up, wanting the baby back in the room with them so she could nurse him.

She still looked sleepy, but completely blissed out, when she took the baby from him. While they napped, a nurse had bathed him, and combed his hair so it was parted to one side. He opened his eyes and mewled at the disturbance, but then ate happily.

She settled him on her chest when he was done, and placed both hands on his back. "I can't believe how mellow he's acting," she said as he snuggled up against her and yawned.

"He's barely four hours old," Derek said.

"I know, but he kicked the crap out of me for nine months and now he's just hanging out and being all cuddly."

"He just needs to recharge his batteries," he said, leaning over to kiss the baby again. He rubbed the baby's head and then clasped his hand over Meredith's for a second. "I wouldn't count him out just yet."

"Mommy?"

Derek whipped his head around and saw Emily standing in the door with Alex and Izzie behind her. She looked nervous, like she was holding back a little.

A huge smile broke out on Meredith's face as soon as she saw her. "Hi, Em."

Emily stepped tentatively into the room, and Alex and Izzie stepped in after her, but held back. Derek pulled her into his arms, and kissed her cheek, but she kept looking at Meredith. Standing by her bed, she asked quietly, "Are you ok?"

"Yeah, I'm ok," Meredith promised, smiling tenderly as she reached out for Emily with her free hand. "Do you want to see the baby?"

Emily nodded, and Derek helped her crawl into the empty space on the bed next to Meredith. Emily laid down next to her, and Meredith wrapped one arm around her and kissed her forehead. "See?" she murmured soothingly. "Everything's ok."

The baby watched Emily, or tried to through unfocused eyes, and she reached out one finger and gently touched the folds of his blanket.

"Roo is really little," she said, like she expected someone who had monopolized Meredith's lap space entirely for the past two months should have been a bit bigger upon arrival.

"Yeah, he is, isn't he?"

"Does he have arms?" Emily asked, petting the baby's back like he was her puppy instead of her brother. Derek smiled, and acknowledged that since the baby looked like a burrito with a head, it was probably a legitimate question on Emily's part.

"Yeah, they're just under the blanket," Meredith said, laughing a little.

"Are we just gonna call him Roo?"

"No, we're going to give him a real person name too," Derek said. _Jack?_ "We just don't know what it is yet."

"He's beautiful, you guys," Izzie said, and until she spoke Derek had practically forgotten they were there.

Meredith beamed, and then asked, "Emily, do you want to hold him?"

"I can?"

"Yeah, of course."

Derek helped her settle into the chair he had been using, took the pillow he had for his nap to prop her arm up, and then took the baby from Meredith.

Emily looked up expectantly at him, with her hands at her sides, and it struck him then that he should have told her how to hold him before his hands were full.

"Go like this, squirt," Alex said, and Derek turned to find him cradling his arms with nothing in them. When Emily mimicked his motions, Derek settled the baby into her arms and helped her adjust her hold on him so that his head was resting comfortably in the crook of her elbow.

As little as he looked when he was curled up on Meredith's chest, he looked so much bigger when he was in Emily's arms. The baby looked up at her, squinting and blinking in the light.

"He's squishy," Emily said.

"He is, a little bit," Derek agreed.

"Can I hold him whenever I want?"

"Yeah, whenever you want."

Emily settled into the chair and watched her brother intently, even though he really didn't do much except doze off to sleep. After a few minutes of talking to Alex and Izzie, he gestured to Meredith to see if she wanted him back, but she shook her head. She wanted Emily to have him for as long as she wanted him.

"Daddy?" Emily said after awhile, "My arm is tingly."

"Ok, do you want to take a break?"

She nodded, and started to shift the baby back towards him, but he scooped him out of her arms before she could do much more with him. "Good job, Bean."

"Mer, can I?" Izzie asked before Derek could give the baby to Meredith again.

"Hi, little man," Izzie cooed, taking him from Derek when Meredith gave the ok. "Oh, you look like your sister, yes you do."

She held him with one arm, and tapped his tiny nose gently with her fingertip while Alex peered at him over her shoulder. "I want one," she said.

Emily crawled back into bed with Meredith and slung an arm over Meredith's stomach, and stayed there. She snuggled against Meredith when George, Lexie, and Cristina came in to see and hold the baby, when Mark came in to see him and let Derek know that he had a box of cigars for them to smoke later, and when the baby started to cry and George passed him back to Derek.

Meredith ran her fingers through Emily's hair, and let her stay there, even though it couldn't have been comfortable for her to have a four-year-old's head on her chest. Emily only left when Meredith promised that she could come back as soon as school was over tomorrow.

After everyone left, Meredith was able to shower and take another short nap. Though he tried to lie down as well, sleep wouldn't come. She woke up and sent him to get the baby back from the nursery, and on his way there, he saw his mother in the hallway, looking around for where she was supposed to go.

"Mom!" he called.

She whipped her head around and broke out into a smile when she saw him. "Derek!" Wheeling her suitcase behind her, she pulled him into a hug when she got to him. "How are you?"

_Exhausted. Drained. Exhilarated. In love. Over the moon._

He smiled and laughed a little, shrugging his shoulders. How could he even begin to say?

Mary nodded knowingly. "Congratulations, sweetheart," she said, kissing his cheek.

"I'm actually on my way to the nursery," he said. "Come with me, you can see the baby. Meredith actually just woke up and she wanted me to bring him in."

They left her suitcase outside of Meredith's door on their way, and stopped in front of the glass window that looked into the nursery. Their son was in the second row, wrapped tightly in his white blanket with the hat back on his head, sleeping peacefully. The blue card taped to the back of his isolette said 'I'm a boy!' but under 'Name,' all that was listed was 'Baby Boy Shepherd.'

"That's him," he said softly, pointing him out.

"Oh, Derek," she said, wrapping her arm around his waist. She cupped his face, and kissed his cheek. "He's beautiful. He looks like Emily."

"That seems to be the consensus," he agreed.

"How's Meredith?"

"She's good. She's just tired. And sore."

Jacqui opened the door, and asked, "Dr. Shepherd, did you want to see your son?"

"Yeah, please," he said. "Jacqui, this is my mom, Mary."

They shook hands, and Jacqui led them over to the baby. Mary peered over at him, and then Jacqui asked, "Did you want to hold him, Mrs. Shepherd?"

"Oh, yes."

Jacqui showed her to one of the gliders and then placed the baby into her arms. He cried a little at being woken up and disturbed, then opened his eyes and looked up at her. He stood behind Mary, and laid a hand on her shoulder while she held the baby.

"Hello, sweetie," she said softly, trying to soothe him. "I'm your Nana."

He whimpered and squirmed a little within the confines of his blanket, and Mary adjusted it, loosening it and pulling it away from his neck. She patted his back and and he grunted and cried for a second while he tried to settle.

"Oh, I know," she said comfortingly. "It's been a long day. Yes, sir."

He gave it another moment, and by then, Mary had calmed the baby completely, just by patting his back gently and making shushing noises. "Derek, he's precious," she murmured, not taking her eyes off the baby.

He nodded, and then said, "Meredith wants to name him Jack. After Dad."

Mary did turn around for that, but he couldn't discern if her expression was one for concern, disapproval, or gratitude. "She does?"

"I told her I didn't know," he said quietly when she turned to look at the baby again.

They didn't speak for a few seconds, and he worried that maybe he had offended her, or brought back bittersweet memories that she might not have wanted to deal with right now. But when she looked back at him, she had tears in her eyes. "I think Dad would have liked that very much," she said, her voice quite choked up. "Very much."

In that moment, it felt like, even though his dad wasn't there, that he gave his blessing anyway. Everyone in his family smiled when they heard his name for a reason; there was no one who was more deserving of a namesake. He would always grieve for his father, and what could have been, but by naming his own son after him, he could honor the kind of father he was, and ensure that he would never really be gone.

"I think so too." He cleared his throat, and said, "I'm going to bring him in to Meredith."

Mary nodded, and he took the baby from her, cradling him in his arms. It felt a little different, now that he had a name, and better somehow.

"I'll call your sisters and let them know he's doing well," she said. She stood up and touched the baby's face while Derek held him.

He laid him back down in the isolette, and reached into his pocket for his phone. He snapped a picture of the baby, and then quickly sent it to all four of his sisters. "Here," he said to his mother, passing her his phone. "Use mine, I just sent them a picture."

He found Meredith sitting up in bed, still looking worn out but alert. She had changed into some of her own pajamas, and had the blankets draped over her legs.

"Are you feeling ok?" he asked as he scooped the baby out of the isolette and handed him to her.

She shrugged. "One of the nurses just brought a bunch of heating pads, so that's good." She unwrapped the baby and nuzzled him close to her. She lifted her shirt and he settled into her arms immediately, and rooted around for her nipple, like he already knew exactly who she was. "Can you get me that pillow?" she asked, pointing as she lifted her shirt and positioned him lying on his side against her breast. She helped him latch on, and lifted him just a little so Derek could wedge the pillow underneath his body.

"Is he ok?" Derek asked.

"Yeah, he's good."

"My mom's here," he said, taking his seat by the side of the bed.

"In the hospital?"

"Yeah, she just got here."

"Did she get to see him yet?" Meredith asked, and adjusted the baby just a little. She looked so natural and unworried by this baby, like everything she learned with Emily had come rushing back to her.

"Yeah, she held him in the nursery for a few minutes," he said. "She's just calling my sisters, she should be in soon. Actually, I sent them all a picture of the baby, so they're all probably trying to call her at the same time."

Meredith laughed, and then settled into nursing the baby, cradling him firmly against her and touching his hands and his back and his knees like a part of her still had to make sure he was real.

"John," Derek said quietly.

Meredith looked up. "What?"

"Everyone called my dad Jack, but his name was actually John," he said. "But we can name him just Jack if you want."

Meredith shook her head, and, smiling, looked down at their son. "John Christopher."

As she articulated that elusive first name choice with the middle name that had long since been decided upon, he wasn't sure how there had ever been any question, how he had doubted it. It felt right.

He reached out and touched the baby's foot, then leaned forward and kissed his head.

"Jack." He whispered the name, and he was surprised to feel that it didn't enhance the grief at all, but instead chipped away at it. Suddenly, a whole future was before them and somehow, as much as it could, that part of his world that had been turned upside down so long ago righted itself again.


	30. Coming back to the beach and to love

_"Thankfully, people keep coming back to the beach (and, for that matter, to love) for this lesson: sometimes it's best to get your walls knocked over and lose your most cherished constructs and be fully swept away... The beach is not as much about slackness of mind (although there is some good in that) as it is about mindfulness to small and simple things. The beach teaches us to redefine rush. It teaches us the value of pause. It sinks us into contentment, and keeps building us up. We keep getting the chance to transform ourselves. With any shift of wind or weight, we know we can come about…and we can keep on coming about. And that slow, crooked seemingly aimless path of our lives at the beach may just be getting us closer and closer to our best selves." - How to Live at the Beach_

* * *

In the end, she always hoped to end up back here. And not just at this house, though seeing Emily run joyously out onto the sand when they arrived yesterday was enough to make her well up with tears.

For a long time after their joint extended hiatus from surgery, they talked about taking more regular vacations, just some time away from grueling 60-hour work weeks to recharge their batteries, but then his mother got cancer, and they had another baby, and she started her fellowship, and before they knew it, it had been three years since they were here.

Everything still looked the same. The people who owned the house still hadn't put in a dishwasher and now, the house felt even smaller than it did before. But the sun still poured into the bedrooms upstairs, and the moist, gritty sand under her feet now as she walked away from the jetty still lifted her up.

"Mom?"

Looking at her, it seemed ridiculous that she could even think that everything looked the same. Emily was in pull-up diapers the last time they were here. Now, she had grown tall for her age, lost all her baby fat, and her hair had lengthened into loose waves and darkened to the color of buttered toast. She had just made the age cut-off and was about to start first grade, and had a mouth full of lost and loose teeth to prove it.

Emily didn't wait for a response before she continued with her question. "You know how when you lose a tooth, the part of your mouth where the tooth was is all soft?"

Meredith nodded. They'd put the first three teeth under Emily's pillow for the tooth fairy over the last two months and spent much time, at Emily's request, exploring the empty spaces in her mouth. "Yes."

"Is that what a brain feels like?"

She paused for consideration. Of all the ways that she could try to explain it to Emily, a soft gum might have been the most relevant and easily understood, if not a perfect match. "A little bit."

"Can I come to the hospital with you one day so I can touch a brain and see?"

She smiled, and remembered a time when she was five years old and was awed by the thought of her mother's hand inside someone's body, fixing it, healing it. Emily had never seen either she or Derek operate before, and since she started full-day kindergarten the September after Jack was born, she hadn't been to the hospital much at all.

When Meredith went back to work when Jack was three months old, they put him in the hospital daycare with Brenda and kept Emily in full-day preschool. But they finally broke down and hired a part-time babysitter who stayed with Emily during the day for the past two summers and picked her up from school at 3:30 each afternoon. It wasn't ideal, or exactly what Meredith wanted, but it was better than the alternative of using the gallery as a de facto babysitter. And so, Emily was nearly six years old and had never seen a surgery before. Not even an appy.

"We don't really touch brains with our fingers, Em," Meredith said. "We have tools that we use."

"Well, I can touch one with my finger," Emily shrugged. They could see the house in the distance, coming closer and closer to it, and to Derek and Jack, as they kept walking. "Can you find one for me?" Emily asked hopefully. "It doesn't have to be one that's in somebody's head already."

Meredith chuckled as Emily tried to negotiate a deal. "We don't really keep extra brains lying around, Em. But you can touch one of the models that we use if you want. It feels just like a real brain."

"But it's not a real brain."

"No, it's not."

Emily sighed. "I really need a real one."

"I don't know if I can find you a real brain, Em."

"Can you try?" Emily asked hopefully.

Meredith nodded. She could at least promise that. "Yeah, I'll try."

Emily seemed content to leave it at that, and she kept walking with an extra spring in her step, clutching a bucket of seashells that they had collected on the first half of the walk. Her green and pink polka dot bikini, worn today for the first time, was still bone dry, and Meredith knew Emily was trying to be a good sport but was itching to get into the ocean.

"Why do you want to see what a brain feels like anyway?" she asked after a minute.

Emily shrugged. "Cause it's cool."

"You don't think it's gross? Brains have blood and guts and stuff on them."

Emily shook her head and reached for Meredith's hand with her free one, pulling on Meredith's arm as she said simply, "You don't."

Meredith smiled and squeezed Emily's hand. She could see two chairs and a blue and white umbrella in front of their house, and enough of Derek's bare legs jutting forward even though she couldn't quite see his body yet.

"I'll see if I can find you a brain," she promised.

They found Derek and Jack just where they'd left them almost an hour before, when Emily was begging to do something fun but Jack was more than ready for his afternoon nap. Derek reclined in his beach chair, with his legs stretched out, his feet burrowed into the sand, and Jack asleep against his bare chest.

It seemed like Jack had sprung up into a bright-eyed little boy almost overnight. Like his sister, he was curious and imaginative, but while Emily was methodical, Jack was spontaneous, energetic, boundless. He started out with a head full of dark hair and dark blue eyes, and every day, he built on that to look more and more like Derek.

It happened less and less as she grew fully out of the child's role and into the mother's, but sometimes, despite everything, she wished that at least one of her parents were in her life, just so she could see what was passed down beyond the obvious. Derek knew what kind of baby he was, and even if he couldn't remember everything for himself, he had a clear picture of what his early childhood was like and how he fit into it. They knew exactly what qualities of Jack's or Emily's could be potentially traced back to Derek, because Derek's mother could tell them so. Sometimes—rarely, but still, sometimes—she wished that someone was there to point out some of the good things and say, "Oh, Meredith, they're just like you."

"Daddy," Emily shouted.

Derek, cradling Jack with one hand, held his free hand up to his lips. "Shhh," he reminded her.

"Me and Mommy got like 28 shells," Emily said, quieter this time.

"Twenty-eight?" he asked.

Meredith sat down in the empty chair next to him. The umbrella shaded her completely, but she kept her cover-up on anyway, smoothing it over her thighs. Emily held on to her bucket, but shifted impatiently from one foot to the other.

"Yep. A lot of them are little though."

"Well, still. A shell's a shell, right?"

She shrugged. "Can you come in the ocean with me?"

"When Jack wakes up, I will," he promised.

"When will that be?"

"He's not getting burnt, right?" Meredith interrupted.

"I think he's ok."

Meredith pursed her lips, and then pulled a towel out of their bag. She spread it over Jack, covering his shoulders, and leaned over to make sure his face was shaded. He probably really was fine, but she shuddered at the thought of sunburn on a baby. He'd play the rest of the afternoon, but at night when the pain actually set in, he would scream and scream and there would be nothing she could do.

"Dad," Emily interjected, and repeated her question. "When will he wake up?"

"Probably soon."

"Can't you just wake him up right now?" she said, her voice drawing out into a definite whine.

Derek smiled. If they woke Jack up before he was ready, no one would be doing anything fun. "Nice try. Ask Mommy to take you in for a little while and then I'll come down," he offered.

"She won't go in the high waves with me," Emily whined as Derek put a reminder finger to his lips. "Will you, Mom?"

She wanted to. She really did. But she just didn't trust herself to keep a good hold on Emily in waves up to her waist and nearly over Emily's head. And even if she did carry her out there, Emily wouldn't have wanted to stand still anyway. She wanted to jump in headfirst and have an adventure.

Meredith noticed it more and more ever since Emily started what she called "real school" last September. Emily wanted to keep up. She wanted to do everything all the other kids had done, and she wanted to do it better. And especially since Jack was born, she didn't want to be a baby anymore. It's why she only called her 'Mommy' at home, and even then, only about half the time.

"Sorry, Em."

"See?" Emily asked Derek pointedly.

"Em, it probably won't be that much longer."

Meredith eased herself up out of her chair and reached for Emily's hand. "Em, come on, Daddy will be down in a little bit."

"Dad!"

"Emily, if you wake up your brother, then we won't be going in the ocean at all, I can tell you that right now," Derek said, consciously trying not to raise his voice. "He will probably be awake soon anyway, but I would like you to please be patient."

Emily pouted, but followed Meredith down to the shoreline. Overall, she had adjusted well over the past eighteen months, but sometimes she got tired of being told that she had to be patient, that Jack wasn't big enough to do something yet.

In the wet sand by the water, Emily plopped down and started to dig. "Mommy," Emily said. "Come on!"

Meredith bunched her cover-up around her waist and sat cross-legged on the sand next to Emily, helping her to make the drippy sand castles that Derek had taught them both how to do. She let the sand slip through her fingers as Emily scooped wet sand with both hands and packed it into a solid foundation.

"Mommy?" Emily asked a few minutes later. "Can I go in the water for a little bit? Not in the deep part?"

Meredith nodded, and watched Emily wade in. She bent to wash the wet sand off her bare legs as Emily rolled onto her back in shallow water and let the waves trickle in and ripple over her belly.

"Mom, look at me!" Emily cried, waving her arms and legs up and down. She looked like she had just taken a mud bath, and even her hair, splayed out against the ground, was caked with sand.

Meredith didn't want to stand too close to her, or give any indication whatsoever that she may be hovering, but she kept a sharp eye on exactly how deep and how strong the waves were by the time they reached Emily.

"You look like you're making snow angels," Meredith called out so Emily could hear her over the roar of the surf.

"No, sand angels!"

"You're doing a good job," she said, as a slightly bigger wave rolled in with an extra inch of water. "Lift your head up, Em!"

"What?" Emily turned her head towards the ocean just in time to catch a splash of water right in the face. Quickly, she pulled herself into a sitting position, rubbed her eyes with sandy fingers, and coughed a bit.

"You ok?" Meredith asked, fighting the urge to make her get up and move further away from the water's edge.

Emily nodded, and threw in a smile for good measure. "Mommy, I have so much sand on me!" she said, taking notice of her hair and hands for the first time.

"It's ok. It'll come off!"

Over six years ago—still hard to believe—when she was pregnant with Emily, she worried about a million and one different things that all essentially boiled down into one overarching, distinct, nearly paralyzing fear: she absolutely could not mess this baby up. The only thing she knew for sure then was that she was going to get a blank slate of a kid—healthy, thankfully, as proven by numerous ultrasounds—but a blank slate nonetheless. And she wasn't exactly the world's most stellar role model. And if genetics had anything to do with it, well, she was just flat-out screwed.

Just when she thought she had pretty much put her childhood behind her, it came roaring back in the form of a surprise pregnancy that she was in no way ready for. Sure, when she found out about the baby, she was in her thirties, had a good job, and was about to get married. On the surface, she should have been ready, overjoyed even, the way Derek was, but she was absolutely terrified. Every memory she tried to repress just wouldn't stay down—playing on the floor of the OR gallery, watching surgeries while she waited until it was finally time to go home, looking into her mommy's eyes and seeing what she knew, even at four years old, was resentment and a sort of helplessness. Only now, she wasn't in the memories anymore; her own nameless, faceless child had taken her place.

For months, she worried that she couldn't love the baby as much as she should, or as much as any normal person would. She didn't want to be a bad mother, but maybe she would turn out to be wired that way. Maybe she just didn't have it in her. She worried even more when she found out that the baby was a girl and though Derek had tried to understand, the intensity of her fear mystified him. And then suddenly, the baby was in her arms, and she was stunned and relieved at how quickly, how wholly and completely, she loved her. Once she realized that though, another question still nagged at her. This love felt so instinctual, so primal, that she couldn't help but wonder why Ellis Grey was the way that she was.

She still worried all the time that she wasn't doing this right. After all, she was learning as she went along. But she and Derek had raised a happy nearly-six-year-old, and looking at Emily now, Meredith knew that her family was the single biggest achievement of her life. It may not have seemed that way to anyone on the outside, but Emily was playing and laughing and she had a sweet little brother who was asleep in his father's arms. It was bigger than med school, bigger than becoming a surgeon, bigger than marrying Derek even. To her, these kids, and the fact that they not only existed at all but that they were happy, was improbable, astounding, extraordinary.

"Hey," Derek said, startling Meredith out of her thoughts. "Look who's up."

Jack, always slow to wake, rested his head on Derek's shoulder but looked at Meredith with a shy smile. His little belly poked out—he was always thirsty when he woke up and had probably just drank almost a full sippy cup of water—and his navy blue swim trunks didn't cover the top of his swimmy diaper.

She opened her arms and he leaned out of Derek's grasp and into hers. "Hi, Jack," she murmured, and kissed his forehead before he settled against her. "Did you have a nice nap?"

He nodded.

"Do you want to go in the water?"

He shook his head.

"I'm going to take her out a little before she freaks out," Derek said. Meredith nodded and held on to Jack while she watched Derek swing Emily into his arms and then set her down in the waves. He held on to her, lifting her up as each wave crested around them. Meanwhile, Jack wrapped his legs around her waist and rested his left arm on her shoulder. He sucked his thumb and watched Derek and Emily play while he tried to wake up.

When she was pregnant with Jack, one of Meredith's biggest worries was that they had maxed out their good kid karma with Emily. She wanted the second baby to be just like the first. Realistically, she knew Emily wasn't the perfect pollyanna of a child, but she was perfect in all the ways that counted to Meredith, and to get another child who was just like that seemed next to impossible.

Fortunately, it didn't happen that way. Emily and Jack had their similarities, but Meredith quickly understood that she didn't want a second Emily. She just wanted Jack to be Jack.

He snuggled against her, and she couldn't believe how quickly he had grown up. It didn't seem like that long ago that she was home on maternity leave, studying for her boards with him swaddled and nestled against her. He was running now, like actually running fast enough to where she had to really chase him rather than just pretend to. He was talking too, not quite as much as Emily was at eighteen months, but then again, everyone told her that boys tended to be a little bit slower at this kind of thing.

"Daddy?" Jack asked after a few minutes of watching Derek and Emily in the water. He pointed to Derek, but didn't squirm in Meredith's arms.

"Yeah, Daddy's playing with Emily."

"Emmy?"

"Yeah, with Daddy."

"Me go too?"

Meredith smiled. "You can try."

She hoisted him off her hip and, holding him by the armpits, dipped him into the water as a wave rolled in and rushed around his ankles. Jack shrieked with delight and kicked his feet out, creating as big a splash as a toddler could. She lifted him up, and then dipped him again, and he kept screaming and laughing, loud enough so that Derek and Emily turned around to see what the commotion was. She did it a third time, and a bigger wave came rushing up and actually drenched him up to his waist.

When she picked him up again and put him back on her hip, he gripped her so tightly that it felt like he'd never let go. His legs, which had just been so warm from being covered with a towel, were clammy and cold against her skin, and he started to soak her cover-up through.

"Mama!" he cried, and for a second, she worried that he was scared, but when she looked at his face, she saw that he was smiling in a sort of delighted, surprised way.

"The water is cold, huh?"

He nodded, and she dipped him into the water again. He screamed with joy and when she pulled him back up to her and tickled him, he threw his head back and wouldn't stop laughing.

"Mama! Mama!" he kept saying between giggles.

"Oh, Jack," she said, holding him close and kissing his cheeks and his forehead and his neck. "Jack, Jack, Jack. I love you."

Later, when Emily finally decided to take a break from the water, Derek and Meredith sat down in their chairs to watch Emily and Jack digging in the sand a few feet ahead. The armrests on their chairs touched, and though they sat in silence for long while, after only a few minutes, he reached for her hand.

"Hey," she said. "When we get back to the hospital, Emily wants us to find her a brain."

"What does she need a brain for?"

"She wants to touch one. She thinks it's cool."

Derek laughed heartily at that and, squeezing her hand, he brought it to his lips and kissed it.

They had been discussing lately, very calmly and more rationally than Meredith had ever discussed anything in her life, the pros and cons of having one more baby. At nearly 45 years old, Derek worried that maybe he was too old, and Meredith pointed out that having a baby at 45 wasn't all that different from having one at 43. When Meredith worried that in a year, she would be an attending and Derek might be chief soon as well for all they knew, Derek reminded her that in a lot of ways, being an attending was a hell of a lot easier than residency and that he certainly wouldn't be accepting the chief position with three kids under the age of eight.

Nothing was decided, and she hadn't gone off birth control yet, but it seemed like they were leaning towards going for it. She still worried about how difficult it might be, even just trying to get pregnant at all since they really weren't as young as they used to be, but she knew it would be worth it. And if it didn't happen, or they decided not to do it, she knew neither of her kids would face the world alone and for her, that was enough.

Right now though, they were just taking a break from it all, letting everything from the outside world continue on without them. At first, it was hard to slow down and she felt guilty that she was doing absolutely nothing, but 24 hours in and she could feel it down in her bones—the deep relaxation that came with escape and stillness.

"I love it here," she sighed. "It's so peaceful."

"Enjoy the peace now," Derek said. "The Shepherds descend on Seattle in a few days."

For the first time ever, they were inviting all of Derek's sisters, his mother, and whichever nieces and nephews wanted to come out to Seattle for Emily's birthday. His mother had of course visited numerous times, and now that she had been cancer-free for twenty months, they were making it a point to get her out to visit every three months or so. Annie and Kathleen flew out a few weeks after Jack was born, and all four of them had visited at least once since Derek had moved out here, but never all five at once. She and Derek still didn't have a final headcount on how many were actually coming, and they were all staying in a hotel anyway, but still, it had the potential to be an interesting visit.

"Emily's going to be six," she said in disbelief. "Six years old. How?"

"I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "Was Cristina able to get a flight?"

Meredith nodded. The biggest adjustment by far in the transition from resident to fellow wasn't the research she was expected to do or the new procedures she needed to learn. It took her months to get used to Cristina, George, and Izzie's absence, which, even though she still had Alex, made Seattle Grace feel like an entirely different hospital. George made it a point to email regularly and call once a week like clockwork, even if only to talk to Emily and Jack when Meredith wasn't home. And Izzie was, of course, still in Seattle, though just at a different hospital. She and Alex were still living in Meredith's old house, and Meredith was excited to know that, starting in about five months, at least one child would have a happy childhood there.

The time difference and the crazy working hours made it difficult to connect with Cristina, but sometimes when she least expected it, her phone would vibrate with a text that said something as simple as 'CABG. Solo today.' and that at least let her know that Cristina was happy. Still, she looked forward to her visits every other month, even though they were always so short, and she couldn't help but hope that she would move back to Seattle after her fellowship ended next July.

"She gets in on Sunday. She's only staying for two days, but..."

"Still, it'll be good to see her," he said. "Does she need a place to stay? We can't fit my insane family, but we can fit Cristina in our house."

Meredith shook her head. "She's staying with Garrett."

"How's that going with them?"

"Well, they've been together for two years, and half of that has been spent living at opposite ends of the country, but I think it's going pretty well considering. They're still together; that has to mean something."

She glanced over at the kids just in time to see Jack jump inside the hole that he and Emily had been digging, and step on the sand castle she had built around it in the process. Clumsily, he plopped down and his little butt hit the edges of the hole, collapsing sheets of packed sand into the hole with him. He scooped some of the sand out and added it to Emily's castle, patting it hard enough that some of it toppled over.

"Jack!" Emily shrieked. "Mom! He's not doing it right!"

A few months ago, she might have tried to hit him, but now all she was doing was yelling in indignation. Progress.

"He's just a baby, Em," Meredith reminded her. If she'd said it once, she'd said it a million times. "He's not trying to mess it up on purpose. You have to show him."

Emily sighed. "Jack, do it like this," she said, literally taking his hand in hers and patting the sand firmly but not as hard as he was doing before. She let him sit in the hole, and tried to rebuild what she could before abandoning the Jack-occupied castle and starting another separate one.

Jack seemed content to hang out in the hole, and with Emily gone, he was free to push the surrounding mounds of sand over and all but flatten them. When a half-dozen seagulls landed a few feet away though, he lost all interest in the sand itself. Springing up out of the hole, he chased after them until, in perfect synchronization, they all flew away. When they did, he laughed and followed them, running down the beach another few yards.

"Jack," Derek called out, and when the toddler turned around, he flashed them a coy smile. "Come on back!"

He just kept going though, and after a few seconds, Derek jumped out of his chair and ran after him. Catching up to him, he swept Jack up with one arm, and holding him like a football, ran him back. Jack screamed and giggled, and stuck his arms out like he was flying, until Derek plopped him down close to where Emily was working on her latest master sculpture.

When he sat back down, Meredith said, "Wait until your mom and sisters see them. They're going to freak out."

Even though Derek made it a point to email pictures regularly, Mary hadn't actually seen the kids in person since Jack's first birthday in March, and his sisters hadn't seen them since they flew to Connecticut for Christmas. When it felt like everything changed day to day, six months was an eternity.

"Your mom would have freaked out too," Derek assured her, even though Meredith didn't think she said it in a wistful sort of way at all. Maybe she had and she just didn't realize it. After all, Derek knew it still bothered her sometimes, only because she still had that nagging feeling that her mother might have resented the kids, not because she was still worried about keeping pace with the legend of a surgeon Ellis was.

"Oh, she would have," Meredith agreed, chuckling and trying to keep it light. Freaking out was a gentle way to describe what would have been Ellis's probable reaction to grandchildren.

"No, in a good way. Our kid wants to touch brains," Derek said. "Don't tell me Ellis Grey wouldn't have thought that was cool."

"Maybe," Meredith conceded, remembering a world where the choice came down to showing an interest or being overlooked entirely. She still couldn't be sure that her parents tried their best, which is all she ever wanted from them anyway. As a parent herself now, she had spent years trying to understand it, but finally she had come to the conclusion that her own best was simply better than her mother's and her father's. Ellis was dead, and though Thatcher knew she had kids because he still had a relationship with Lexie, he may as well have been dead too. That was that. And despite it all, it turned out ok in the end. As the years went by, despite everything she thought she knew about marriage and families, things kept getting better, not worse, and her faith in it all didn't disintegrate, but instead, kept building up.

"We gave them a family though," she said. "I think she could have been proud of that. I hope so anyway. Or respected it, at least. Even though she would have never been able to tell me."

"That's true."

She sighed and settled comfortably into her chair. Derek laid a hand gently on her leg, and she watched as Jack wrecked the second hole Emily dug. But Emily just rolled her eyes this time, and started to pile the sand back on to him, loosely burying her brother. When Jack laughed, and Derek squeezed her thigh, Meredith smiled.

"I'm glad we're here."


End file.
